Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Lepidopteral Love

I seem to be weirdly attractive to butterflies lately. Today it was a little wood satyr that was flying around near my feet, and I just knew it was going to land on my leg. It did. I shooed it away, though, instead of taking its picture there, because I didn't think it would be good for it to be on my insect repellent pants (I have a suspicion that the pants are actually toxic to bugs). Butterflies taste through their feet - I wonder what the pants were like for the butterfly...

Here's the butterfly on a plant instead:
 Yes, it's a terrible picture. It's been that kind of week.

Backyard Bug of the Day:
 Tree cricket nymph, I think. Notice it is missing a hind leg. I posted one a while back that was about half this size, and didn't have that green color on the back yet.

Random Bugs:
 Japanese beetles. The one on top is trying to intimidate me by lifting its legs.

 Assassin bug nymph

 Some other kind of nymph

 Stilt bug, I think.

 I found that cool thorn mimic tree hopper again - higher up on the tree.

 Assassin bug nymph

It's pretty rare to see two blue insects in the same day! Wasp on sumac.

 Red milkweed beetle



 
 Bad picture, but I am including it because it is getting ready to fly.

 This is one of the galls on the oak tree that look like huge cotton balls. They have shrunk a bit and turned brownish lately, and the two that were close enough to the ground for me to see were open on one side. Inside you can see the insect eggs (or pupa, I am not sure which they are).

Click beetle

 Eastern tiger swallowtail - It has lost most of the yellow on its back. It also looks like a cartoon monster eating its own head.

Speaking of caterpillars, I got a new caterpillar identification guide today. It is overwhelmingly thorough. I have a feeling that I am still not going to be able to identify anything because it's an information overload (and there are still way too many caterpillars that look basically the same). I am disappointed that I didn't find any caterpillars today, though, to test it out.





No comments:

Post a Comment