The Bugs in the Backyard: After Dark

You don't even have to go outside to know that the night is alive with insects. All you have to do is open a window. It's loud out there. Crickets and katydids creating a cacophony. It's wild. But you know me; I did go outside. I wanted to spend some time admiring the sky, but I always turn on the back porch light and look out first before I go out in the dark, because if there is a skunk loitering near the porch I don't want to go outside in the dark and startle it. More to the point, I don't want to go out in the dark and have it startle me by spraying me. When I turned on the light and looked out I saw something move on the stones at the bottom of the porch steps, something much smaller than a skunk.

A Cricket. I think this is called a camel cricket. It very obligingly sat for me to take its picture.

While I was taking pictures of the cricket, I noticed more movement on the stone next to it:

I forget what this is called - a firebrat, maybe?

I then checked out the tree growing through the porch and found a few more insects (in addition to the many caterpillars living there, but more on them later):

Moth

This is the first plume moth I have seen since I got back.

Beetle

What's fun about all of these nocturnal finds is that they weren't attracted by the porch light, because I had just turned it on - they were already out there, in the dark, living their bug lives in the night.

Now I want to talk about the daytime...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

This is one of the happiest finds I have made this year - a monarch caterpillar! I haven't even seen a monarch butterfly this year, much less any caterpillars, so it was exciting to find this on a milkweed plant today. And I found it by spotting the caterpillar, not by noticing leaf damage or frass. It's less than an inch long right now, and must have hatched from an egg laid while I was out of town - so there was a monarch butterfly here when I was away.

I checked on it about an hour after that first picture, and it had eaten this hole in the leaf.

Today was definitely a day for caterpillars:

I think this caterpillar has doubled in size since I found it the other day, in addition to changing color and changing its shape somewhat. It is not, by the way, a red-spotted purple. I don't know what it is, but I know now what it is not.

There are still several of them on this tree. They have odd postures for relaxing. I rarely see them eating.

A chance to compare instars: The bigger of these two is probably close to an inch long. I am guessing that tomorrow it is going to be green. Notice it is a lighter brown than the smaller one.

This big furcula caterpillar spent all day in this position on the bottom of a leaf at the top of the tree (the tree is not very tall yet, but it is taller than I am).

There are several of these on the tree as well. Aside from the big one above, they all seem to be about the same size. Each has its own leaf...

... but this one briefly had company. When I checked later neither one of these caterpillars was on that leaf.

Elsewhere in the backyard:

Another eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar. Not surprising with the number of ETS butterflies I have been seeing lately (though today most of the swallowtails I saw were either a different species of swallowtail or the dark version of the female ETSB).

And a looper.

Random Bugs:

Cricket that I found behind the rain gauge when I emptied it. Immature.

Another cricket on the rain gauge. I can't tell if it's the same species or not. It was bigger, but it still looks immature.

There were lots of bees today: