So Many Caterpillars

I've really got to work on my time management...

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

I found this orange-ish toad tonight when I went outside to look at a moth on the window. The moth had flown by the time I got out there, but I found this toad, so it was a worthwhile effort.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Some kind of fly with amazing eyes. Yet another new bug for me - and yet another I didn't find in my book.

Random Bugs:

Hopper

 Being attended by an ant. Ants look after hoppers because they want the honeydew (basically a sugar water) that the hoppers excrete.

 I saw a LOT of butterflies today, of a variety of species. This is the best picture I got of a butterfly. "But, that's a terrible picture!"you say? EXACTLY.

Moth pretending to be a bit of dried grass. Obviously the moth doesn't have a problem with its blood running to its head (do moths have blood?), because this is what these moths do, so it must not bother them, but that's always what I think about when I see one. That and downward dog in yoga.

It often happens in the spring that at some point a certain species of bug will emerge, and all of a sudden they are everywhere. That is the case with this bug. I think this is a Four Lined Plant Bug. They suddenly appeared yesterday (I didn't get a picture yesterday) and today I saw them all over the place.

Beetle

Beetle

A strangely cozy arrangement of a gypsy moth caterpillar (the small one) and a forest tent caterpillar. The forest tent caterpillar is another example of a bug that has suddenly appeared. A few weeks ago I was seeing them elsewhere in town when I went for a walk (a couple of miles from here), but I wasn't seeing any in my backyard, even though last year there were a lot of them on the crab apple trees. Then today I saw three of them, in different places in the backyard, and in different instars (stages of development between molts in caterpillars or other larvae). What's interesting is that I am suddenly finding them when they are pretty far along in the caterpillar phase, not when they are small.

Caterpillar close-up - forest tent caterpillar.

This one was smaller.

Dangling caterpillar. You really have to watch where you're walking these days...

 Tiny looper caterpillar.

 It looks like it has parasite eggs on its back.

 Sawfly larvae. If those are all the same, I am thinking either they start out green, like the one on the left, and become multicolored, or they start out multicolored and turn green.

 

 Another sawfly larva

 Another caterpillar. The backyard had a lot of insects in their larval stage today.

 

And some in the nymph stage:

Remember these bugs from the other day when I found a lot of them on the flowers of this bush?

I found one today that is looking more developed.

 

 Same kind of bush - click beetle

Grasshopper

A leaf bug of some kind, I think. Anyway, it's a Hemiptera.

 Plume moth

 

 Some kind of fly?

 

 The moth I went outside for flew away, but I did find this one on the window.

Apparently something has eaten a cranefly, and left the undigestible bits behind.

Remember that egg from yesterday?

It has changed to a darker color today.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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A bit of Arachnid Video today: Click HERE to see video of a spider building a web.

 Not the web in the video.

Soggy

We got almost 1 3/4 inches of wonderful rain, the heat wave is over, and I am still going to complain about the weather. It was SO HUMID today I thought I was going to dissolve. I actually preferred it when it was in the 90s and dry to this disgusting day. Bleh. The bugs didn't have a problem with it, though, based on the two bug walks I did (because my first one was incomplete before we went out this afternoon, and when I came home I wanted to finish it, and just did complete a walk around the backyard, in spite of the icky weather and the mosquitoes). But there are definitely different bugs to be found on a wet, humid day than a dry one. For instance, no butterflies or bees were to be seen today. Instead there were bugs that like things damp.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Once again I find an insect that is new to me. From what I see in Kaufman's Field Guide to Insects of North America, this looks like a flat bark beetle. I am used to reading about bugs in the book that have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of species in their genus, but this one has a surprising 3 in North America (according to Kaufman's FGtIoNA). The book says they have extremely flattened bodies, but I didn't get a side view of this one. It also says they are usually found under tree bark, and I did find this climbing up the side of a tree. It was climbing fast, too. I am not confident about this identification, however.

And it was not climbing alone:

Most of the trees whose trunks I examined today were covered in sowbugs.

 Though they are arthropods, and therefore related to insects, sowbugs are not insects. They are, in fact crustaceans, which means they are also related to lobsters. They are land crustaceans, but they do still have a fondness for water, not that they live in it, but they come out in great numbers when there has been rain and everything is damp. Like today. As you can see, they come in various colors, and though it is not evident in this picture, I saw them in a variety of sizes today.

 Terrible picture, but these two met, had a tussle, and one of them ended up falling off the tree trunk.

 Springtails also come out when it's damp. There are two here.

I did say there were a lot of these out today... there are seven sowbugs in this picture, but some of them are hard to see.

Not all of the sowbugs were on wet tree trunks.

Random Bugs:

This tiny hopper landed very briefly on the same tree with all of the above.

I was going to try to be organized about posting the rest of the bugs, but with about 400 pictures today I think I will just post in the order I took them... for the most part...

 Cranefly

There were quite a lot of these craneflies about today.

 Two on one leaf

 Some other kind of fly

 This is the second long-legged fly I have seen so far this year. I saw the first one yesterday, but it flew off before I could get a picture of it (that happened with a lot of cool bugs today. I see so much more in my backyard than I can ever show you).

I think this is a caterpillar.

 This is not a caterpillar. It is a larva, I think a sawfly larva. Although it really looks like a tiny, spiky cucumber.

 A tiny, spiky cucumber with legs and a face. Note that there are many, many prolegs, more than the 5 pairs of a caterpillar.

Another, more colorful sawfly larva.

And while we're on the subject of larvae, here's my favorite larva. Is it weird to have a favorite larva? Well, I do. I like this one because it's blue. I have no idea what it is going to turn into, but I am pretty sure it's some kind of beetle.

 Weevil

 I am not sure what this is. Actually, I just have no idea, not sure sounds like I have some sort of guess, and I don't.

 Beetle

 Huge mosquito?

 Another new (to me) species of hopper

A couple of interesting things...

 I saw this round thing in a drop of water. I don't know what it is - it could be some kind of egg, it could be nothing...

 Then I found this. My assumption is that it is some kind of insect egg, but if it is, it is the biggest insect egg I have ever seen. About 1/8 inch long.

 Then I found this on the same leaf, which is obviously of caterpillar origins. I can't tell if it's a shed skin or the remains of a caterpillar that has been eaten by something. But if it is a shed skin, then I thought maybe the egg is not an egg, but a cocoon? Except it would be pretty small for a cocoon, particularly for this caterpillar. So I have no idea. I am tempted to "adopt" it to see what comes out of it.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Mite on the same tree as the BBotD and a lot of sowbugs

 Jumping spider that has caught a hopper

 Daddy-long-legs with a mite on one leg, and another leg missing

 Jumping spider

 You can't see the web, but it's there...

 While I was watching it, a gnat landed on the web and got caught. This happens surprisingly often when I am looking at spiders, but I am starting to wonder if the gnats are attracted to me, and since I am leaning near the web, they fly into it. I can't really feel too bad about that, given how many gnats have bitten me, or tried to fly into my eyes, or up my nose...

 This is a brand new species of spider for me. And I have never seen a web like that, either.

 Another jumping spider. This one has caught another spider for prey.

 Hiding out between two leaves