Whoosh

I think today read yesterday's blog post and said, "Windy? You call that windy? I'll show you windy!"

It was very windy in the backyard today. And kind of cold. A disappointing first outing for my new camera. There was hardly anything to take pictures of.

Chipmunk

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Assassin bug

 This is what it was doing when I first spotted it. That dark spot on the front of the leaf is a small fly. I think the assassin was poised and ready in case the fly flew closer, which it did not.

Can you see the assassin bug here? It didn't like me watching it, and moved to the other side of the leaf, which is too bad, because then this cricket came along.

 You're going the wrong way, assassin bug.

Random Bugs:

 Another assassin bug

 White hickory tussock moth caterpillar has come to the end of the leaf... and gone over the edge.

A LOT of wasps in the backyard today:

 

 

 Leaf bug

 The temperature had dropped into the 50s by about 5 o'clock, which makes the bumblebees kind of lethargic. This one was in a groove in the siding on the house.

 The craneflies remain elusive outside, but this one was in the house - here it is on the movie screen while we were watching Pride and Prejudice. This is the part where [spoilers if you have never read Pride and Prejudice] Lizzy goes for a walk at Rosings and encounters Colonel Fitzwilliam, who tells her all about how Darcy split up her sister's romance with Mr. Bingley.

 Female two-spotted tree cricket on the screen on the back porch. It was not there because of the porch light - it was there already when I turned on the light to go outside.

Arachnid Appreciation:.
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Also on the back porch

The Difference of a Day

A big contrast between yesterday and today in the backyard. Both days were dark and gloomy, but today was about ten degrees cooler, and a great deal less buggy. One similarity between the two days - amphibians.

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

 Frogs and toads (I believe this is a toad) are not a common sight in my backyard - I see them a handful of times over the summer - and I have now seen them two days in a row. Usually I only see them when I am mowing the lawn. I have to mow the lawn tomorrow (if it doesn't rain), maybe I'll extend my streak to three.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1

 Some kind of beetle larva

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 I walked into a swarm of these today. These are tiny hoppers of some kind that I see flying around in the fall. They then land on tree trunks, and usually fly away before I can get close enough to take a picture. Today I actually got pictures of two of them, which is pretty unprecedented. I decided to make them Co-Bugs of the Day because it is very likely that I won't get another picture of one this year.

 They have slightly different patterns on them.

Today was very windy, and wind is the enemy of live insect macrophotography. There were so many insects I didn't even bother to try to take pictures of because the wind was blowing the plants around too much. And how many pictures of bumblebees do I really need in one day? Because most of the bugs I saw today were bumblebees.

Random Bugs:

 Hoverfly

The white hickory tussock moth caterpillars have gone from the sitting-on-a-tree-trunk mode to an eating mode. I found them on raspberry vines in several places in the backyard today.

 Honeybee

 One of the many bumblebees. This one was just sitting in one place, rather than flying from flower to flower, so this is the one I photographed.

I saw several looper caterpillars, too:

 These first three pictures are all the same one...

 Obviously a different one.

 Wasp? Or bee? I still don't fully understand the difference.

 Cucumber beetle, I think.

 Weevil

 

 When it's windy, bugs on tree trunks are the easiest to photograph. Actually, bugs on tree trunks are usually the easiest to photograph.

After teeming with insect life yesterday, the heart-shaped garden was comparatively abandoned today. There were a lot of bumblebees, and:

One hoverfly

One ailanthus webworm moth

One assassin bug

And two spittle bugs involved in a transfer of genetic information.

Arachnid Appreciation:.
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