Mental Meltdown

I had a bit of an existential crisis in the backyard today while doing my bug walk. I was contemplating whether the bug walk itself was really as frustrating as it seemed, or was it merely a reflection of the fact that I was already past my aggravation threshold for the day because it was almost 90ºF and I had spent most of the afternoon working on a sewing project that didn't go well. Then it occurred to me that insect macrophotography is just a really frustrating activity. I find it frustrating on a lot of days. Bugs don't want to have their picture taken. They don't want to let people get that close to them, due to the "I can squash you like a bug" idea. When I try to take pictures of them, very, very often they fly away before I can even point my camera at them. Or scurry into the grass. Or find some other way to disappear. Or they wait until the precise moment when I have the camera in focus on their incredible eyes and then they move. The might fly away, or they might just scurry out of frame, or even just move enough so that by the time I push the shutter button on the camera, if the bug is there at all it is a blur.  And don't even get me started on the wind, and how often the air will be completely still, until I get my camera focused and there is a sudden breeze. Or a sudden gale.

I get a lot of pictures like this:

 You'll see this bug again later.

 And this one.

 This is the best I got of this one, so you won't see another of this bug today.

 Ditto for this one. (I think its a checkered beetle, in case you're wondering).

 This particular moth almost always lands on the underside of leaves. You can see the photography challenge... This might be an eight-spotted forester moth.

Aaaaand away it goes.

 

 Just. Sit. Still.

 I'm not going to eat you!

Sigh...

People are constantly commenting about my pictures of bugs by saying that I must have a lot of patience, but I don't. I am not a patient person. What I have is a lot of persistence. I persevere. Patience implies a calm acceptance that I just don't have; I have a stubborn doggedness that allows me to keep trying to get the shot, sometimes until long after it becomes obvious that the bug is just not going to allow it. This is how I sometimes end up with 200 pictures of the same bug, and none of them are in focus. So yes, I am persistent, but I am not patient, because I find this really frustrating sometimes, and then I thought, as I meandered around my backyard, not even bothering to try to get a picture of the butterfly I saw, because I can tell when a butterfly is not going to land, maybe I am not suited for this. Maybe someone who is so frequently frustrated, so lacking in patience is not cut out for insect macrophotography. That had to be the hot weather talking, though, because, if I may say so myself, I AM suited for this. I knew not to bother chasing the butterfly, which may have been a pearl crescent, but I didn't get a close look at it) - I watched it, because butterflies are wonderful, but I knew there was no point in going after it for the picture. I can spot a tiny moth that blends in with the tree bark. I can get up close and personal with a spider and not freak out, even when the spider is a jumping spider and it jumps on my head. I have the perseverance to keep after the shot, and I do know when it's impossible. I am really good at finding things (acknowledging all the while that at every moment I am probably walking past a hundred bugs and not seeing them). I have learned to read the attitude and personality of some of them many bugs, and know what they will and won't put up with as I try to take their pictures. And yes, I may take 600 pictures in a day and only come out with 10 that are even usable, and it's maybe only every few thousand that I get something that really is incredible, but I keep trying. And you know, there is a reason why so many of the amazing insect photos you see on the internet are of dead bugs (with stacked focus, if you want to get technical, meaning the photographer didn't take that picture, they made it with computer software). Insect macrophotography is not easy. I could probably be better at it, but I think I am doing all right.

Crisis averted. Confidence in insect hunting and photographing restored. However, I am still rubbish at sewing.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I took over a hundred pictures of this bug, in case you were wondering. This was pretty exciting for me to find, because it is a new leaf hopper species for me. Of course, my excitement over finding a new hopper species (actually, I found two, but more on that anon) was tempered by the fact that it would not sit still (this was near the beginning of my bug walk, and the frustration had already begun). It crawled all over some leaves on a tree, it crawled on my hand, it hopped to my shirt, it dropped to the ground... So, I never got a great picture, but I did find a new species, so, YAY!

 Flexing its elytra, contemplating flying?

Really bad picture, but that is a discarded exoskeleton on the leaf where I found this hopper. I wonder if this hopper is the one that discarded it.

 This is the other new-to-me hopper species I found today. Although it does strike me that there are some similarities between the two... Anyway, this is the best picture I got of this one.

Eh, this picture is passable, too.

So, about all of these hoppers...

 Last night I was thinking about how at the beginning of spring, which is to say the end of winter when it is just starting to remember that spring is something that exists, I noticed that on days of at least 60ºF I would see candy striped leaf hoppers on my mountain laurel plant. It happened quite a bit - there'd be cold days, and then a nice, warm, springy day, and on that springy day, there would be candy striped leaf hoppers on those leaves (the mountain laurel is an evergreen). But then... that stopped happening. Warm days would come, and there would be no leaf hoppers. And then the warm weather stuck around, and no leaf hoppers. I wondered why. Then last night I had a thought that maybe those particular leaf hoppers, which overwintered as adults, had mated and laid eggs, and come to the end of their lifespan, and there would be no more adults until the eggs hatched and those young ones grew up. But then I thought that maybe they were still around, but had dispersed elsewhere in the backyard, because they no longer had to hang out on the mountain laurel, because it is no longer the only plant with leaves. And then today... I found a candy striped leaf hopper. Not on the mountain laurel.

I found several species of hoppers today, in addition to the ones above:

Random Bugs:

 This moth wasn't even part of my bug walk. I saw it on the kitchen window during a break from sewing and went outside to take this picture. It is probably very well camouflaged in leaf litter or on a tree, but it really stood out on the window. It looks like a cross between a leaf and a stealth plane.

 Another moth. Photographed on a wood sorrel leaf, so if you know how big those are, you get a sense of how small the moth is.

 Cranefly Female - you can just see the ovipositor.

 Speaking of ovipositors, there was another woodwasp ovipositing on that maple branch today.

 Not sure if this is a fly (stonefly?) or some kind of wasp.

 This is probably the most cooperative weevil I have ever encountered. Usually by the time I get this close to one, it pretends to be dead and drops to the ground.

 To get this close is amazing. Maybe it knew what a rough day I was having. Or maybe it was so hot it didn't want to move, not even to just drop to the ground.

 Another new species for me - a click beetle. This species is not in my book.

 There were several of these in the backyard this evening as I mowed the lawn. Either that or there was one, and it was following me around.

 I found this on the cover of the barbecue grill. I think it was dead - it was lying on its back when I found it.

 

 Here's what it looks like flipped over.

The porch light attracted a lot of bugs tonight, most of them tiny and gnat like, but a few moths, some ichneumon wasps, some beetles...

 

 Most of the pictures of the few bugs I got were no good, but this one is all right...

 

 Very UNcooperative weevil.

So you're probably looking at all of these bugs and wondering what I am whining about. It sure looks like I found a lot of bugs, and got some okay pictures. But putting aside the fact that my mood was probably mostly a reflection of the weather and the sewing, A) I took almost 400 pictures today to get the ones I posted here, and some of the ones posted are BAD, and B) There are no pictures of the MANY bugs that flew (or crawled) away before I could get their pictures! Unfortunately, tomorrow is going to be hot again, but I don't have to sew (or mow the lawn, and believe me, knowing that I was going to be mowing the lawn later on this hot day did not help my mood during my bug walk!), so here's hoping I will take all the aggravating things in stride, and remember that I LIKE BUGS!

Arachnid Appreciation:
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