The Bugs in the Backyard: Selfieless

I am not one for taking selfies. I can never get it framed right, and it always ends up being an unflattering angle, so when do take one, I intentionally make it bad, filling up most of the frame with whatever is in the background (the thing I really want a picture of), and just a bit of my face or head in the corner. It's even harder (actually, nearly impossible) for me to take one with my real camera. And it is impossible with the macro lens, and the camera on manual focus.

All this is to explain why I didn't even try to take a picture of the grasshopper that landed in my armpit today when I was on my bug walk, trying to get a picture of a spider (I didn't get the spider, either - it scurried into hiding when I was distracted by the grasshopper that landed in my armpit).

The bugs today were in a lot of awkward places.

So was the Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

This little creature was about an inch long.

I was sort of balancing on one foot to take this picture.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Wasp. I think female. I had to stick my head among the branches of the back porch tree for this shot.

Random Bugs:

This caterpillar has turned from green back to brown, and wandered away from the leaf where it has been living all week. I saw it crawling along another branch, and later on another part of the tree, and then it was gone. Gone to find a place to pupate, I think.

This ladybeetle pupa is on a leaf at the top of the tree, one that the large furcula caterpillar has partly (well, mostly, really) eaten. I don't know if it purposely avoided the spot where the pupa was or not. (That caterpillar also disappeared today, most likely to go find a place to pupate. I am surprised it took so long - it looked like it was ready to go for the last couple of days, but obviously it knows better than I do).

The next biggest furcula, which has quite a bit of growing to do. It looks like one of its "tails" is broken. I didn't notice when I took the picture, so I'll have to check it out tomorrow.

They look like they are not speaking to each other. Again I tried to get a picture showing their relative size, but they look about the same here.

Cabbage white butterfly

Skipper - and a tiny beetle

I think this is a small copper butterfly.

Wasp

This small patch of goldenrod was buzzing with bees of a variety of species. Most of them were zooming around too fast for me to get pictures.

The eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar has gone green. Not completely yet, though.

Fly

Furcula caterpillar that just molted. It looks like it left behind a pair of skinny jeans.

I have seen very few dragonflies this summer, but today, late in the afternoon as the sky was darkened with clouds, and the thunder rumbled in the distance, and the humidity was unbearable, there were about a dozen or more dragonflies zooming about, 10 feet and more above the ground. Here you can see one flying, and there is one sitting on the end of a branch.

Still one sitting on the branch, and one flying. This was one of those bug scenes that was fun to watch, but really impossible for me to show to you.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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