Playing Pretend

A young niece of mine came to visit me today, and as we were walking in my woods she kicked her feet in the dried leaves and said, "Did you know this is called leaf litter?"

I informed her that I did, in fact, know this (and I thought it was awesome that she learned this in school), and that I have written about it on my blog, about how it is a place for a lot of little creatures to live, like insects, and shrews, and snakes. And as if to prove what a great habitat leaf litter is, we found a toad that blended in so well with it that when it hopped away from us we had a hard time spotting it again among the dried leaves it looked so much like:

The thing I was most excited to find in my backyard today was not the toad, though, or even any of the bugs, though I was pretty psyched about today's Backyard Bug of the Day. What I was most excited to see was the first blooms of the milkweed plants:

 

 Milkweed is so attractive to insects that for someone like me, who wants to find insects, the flowers appearing on this plant is an exciting yearly backyard milestone. Granted, a lot of the insects that feed on the milkweed plant eat the leaves, or suck liquid out of the stem or leaves, but adding blooming flowers to the plant just makes it more attractive. The flowers are also beautiful and smell incredible, so the flowers are welcome in their own right.

Now, about that Backyard Bug of the Day:

The toad was not the only creature in the backyard blending in. These are thorn mimic plant hoppers. They don't blend perfectly, because the plant they are on does not have thorns, but I am sure that whatever they are trying to hide from by pretending to be something they are not does not know that much about plants. They aren't spaced like real thorns though - and of course these are the reasons I knew to look more closely at what really look very convincingly like thorns.

Except thorns don't have eyes and legs. Still, my niece was concerned that I might prick myself on one of them. I told her not to worry. They're not that sharp, and they would probably scoot away if I even tried to touch them.

Random Bugs:

 Some kind of hopper nymph

Another kind of hopper nymph

 

 Candy striped leaf hopper. As I was looking at it, it kept shooting drops of honeydew out behind it.

 And there's one now!

 Weevil

 Ichneumon wasp

 

Beautiful cockroach. I have never read The Gold Bug by Edgar Allen Poe (I'll get around to it some day), but whenever I see the title of that story, this is the bug I think of. Not all cockroaches are creepy bugs invading your kitchen.

 Check out the proboscis on this Hemiptera!

Arachnid Appreciation:
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In this shot I have highlighted what looks like just a speck on the door of the shed, but it was walking around. It was so tiny I couldn't tell what it was at all, but I could see that it was moving of its own accord. I have a feeling it was too tiny for the spider to eat!