Bugs Are Sometimes Confusing

I had the porch light on last night, and I left it on until after midnight so I could use the cool moths I found out there as Backyard Bug of the Day. Nothing like meeting your day's objective only a few minutes into it. Well, one of the day's objectives, I do have other things to do each day besides take a picture of a cool bug. But given the uncertainty of nature and time, it's good to get it done. And as it turned out, I had very little time for the backyard today, so without the cool moths on the porch last night, there might not be anything for me to post today.

Backyard Bugs of the Day:

 There were quite a few of these moths on the porch. At first I thought they were big fireflies, but they are not, they are moths. It's interesting that I don't think I have seen these before, and suddenly a half dozen or so appear on the porch all together.

 Living in harmony with other moths.

Actually, this one is pretty cool, too. Purplish accents.

There were a lot more moths on the porch last night, and I even took pictures of some of them, but I am not going to go full Lepidoptera Lollapalooza on you today. I am too tired.

And lazy.

Backyard Bud of the Day:

Thistle. I really love thistle, but for some reason, in spite of the many seeds that waft away on the wind each year, we only ever have this one thistle plant. Spiky but lovely.

Update on the baby bugs:

 They're growing and molting.

 You can see bits of the leftover exoskeletons.

I should point out that they were still all huddled up by the eggs until I disturbed them, and that's when they all ran all over the place like this.

I am not sure what's going on here...

 At first  I thought they were mating, though I have never seen bugs mate in that orientation to each other before. But hey, I haven't seen everything in the bug world.
However, a second look showed that they don't even appear to be the same species of bug. In fact, maybe not even the same order.

I am pretty sure these two are mating, though.

Goldenrod is just starting to bloom:

This is a welcome sign (though there really is a bit too much goldenrod in the yard most years) because we need more flowers. There haven't been as many flowers this summer, it seems.

Update on The Caterpillar:

 These are two pictures I took late last night. Unfortunately there's not really much hope of good pictures based on where it has chosen to pupate, but you can see certain things here. The Caterpillar is turned around from the way it was earlier in the evening, and has made another silk anchor on the roof of the cage.

Unlike the monarch caterpillars, which hang straight upside down to pupate, tiger swallowtails make a silk anchor thread that holds them at an angle. In my reading into the subject they don't do this from a horizontal surface like this one, but I assume it knows what it's doing. Anyway, that white line you can see I think is the silk thread wrapped around it.

As of now it has not made a chrysalis yet, but maybe tomorrow...

Arachnid Appreciation:
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This spider was on the porch in the wee small hours of the morning. It was on the screen door with about a billion gnats. Location, location, location...