The Bugs in the Backyard: I Don't Know Why She Swallowed A Fly...

I accidentally ate a bug today. I think it was an unpleasant experience for both of us, though obviously more so for the bug, since I survived the incident and the bug did not. However, it was the bug's fault, so it has only itself to blame. It was very hot and humid today, even in the evening when I did my bug walk, and when I took in a deep breath in preparation for a sigh of woe over my discomfort, one of the many gnats that had been following me around the backyard like electrons around the nucleus of an atom got inhaled. It hit the back of my throat, which set me off coughing, but I don't think I managed to cough it out. I think I swallowed it. And just yesterday I tried to make the case that I am harmless to insects. But then again, this is why when I talk to bugs, trying to get them to pose for me, I tell them, "I don't intentionally eat bugs, you don't have to worry about me." The word intentionally is key - yes, I have accidentally eaten bugs (mostly while riding my bike) but I don't do it on purpose (and I have to be completely honest with the bugs, for some reason, so I can't state a complete denial of bug consumption). And like I said, the bug I ate today was not consumed voluntarily. I will say this, though - the whole time the annoying cloud was following me around, I was looking for a spider web to photograph in the hopes that my tormenting retinue would be captured by a spider. I don't usually take sides in matters of predation, but in this instance I would definitely have been rooting for the spider (I didn't find one, though - at least not one with a completed web, but more on that later).

Backyard Bug of the Day:

My first guess of what this is would be some kind of ground beetle, but it wasn't on the ground, it was on a tree trunk. It also looks like some of the darkling beetles in Kaufman's Field Guide to Insects of North America, but not enough that I am going to say that's what it is. But it's a beetle, for sure.

So beautifully iridescent.

Actually, it is partly because of the gnat that I accidentally swallowed that I found this bug. I was almost at the end of my bug walk when I swallowed the bug, and the incident intensified my annoyance at the gnats that were swarming my head. I thought again about trying to find a spider web for them to get caught in (because quite often as I am trying to photograph orb weaver spiders on their webs, gnats fly into the webs as I am observing them up close, and I have a hypothesis that this is happening because the gnats are coming after me, and fly into the web by accident), which reminded me that I had seen a micrathena orb weaver building a web, and that I had been unable to get a good picture of that spider because it kept moving while building the web, and so I wanted to go back and look at it again, in the hopes of it having finished the web and being stationary. I had to follow a particular path in my backyard to get to that web, and then decided to take the long way round back to the house, which led me past the tree that the beetle was on. I had passed that tree earlier on my walk, but the beetle was not there then (I always check that tree trunk for bugs, and this one was in a pretty obvious place, so I am sure I didn't just miss it the first time). So, by that roundabout reasoning, the gnat that I swallowed is the reason I found this beautiful beetle today.

Random Bugs:

Weevils

Assassin bug nymph

Caterpillar

Hopper nymph

Two interesting things about this shot - the drop of honeydew (which is in several shots of this pose, which means it was just sitting there, although when I was taking pictures of this bug from another angle, it shot many, many drops of honeydew at me, which seems to be a defensive reaction by hoppers sometimes, though it appears to be of dubious value. Honeydew is actually food for some insects, so I don't know how it would work as a weapon. Unless the hopper is offering it up as an alternative to being eaten itself, or as a way to distract a would-be predator), and the huge parasite under the hopper's body (well, huge in relation to the hopper, which was less than 1/4 inch long).

Robber fly

I found a few of these on another tree last week (I think), but today this got more interesting, because nearby on the same tree...

... I found this. I think this is the same kind of bug I found on the front porch one night last week, that became BBotD that day. And I wonder if the picture above is a nymph of this same species.

I am not sure if this is what I saw last week, because I don't think those were green, and I don't think they had that "horn" on the front (I really should just go back and look at that post...), but they look similar, and could be a different instar. And I am not sure that this is the nymph of the other one, because the "horn" is different on both. But it could be. [Edit - I did go back and look at last week's post. The nymphs from last week were not greenish like this, but they did have a shape that was more like the imago (adult) here than this nymph, so I am thinking last week's nymphs become this adult, and these become something else, and it is just a coincidence that they are on the same tree together.]