The Bugs in the Backyard: How Many Is Not Many?

I found something fairly rare in the backyard today - rain. Not much of it, but I did have to wait a while to go out, because every time I thought it had stopped it would start up again. I didn't expect to find a lot of bugs when I did go out, because usually just after a rain they're pretty scarce, but since I didn't know if it would start raining again, I had to go when the going was good. And I was right, they were pretty scarce. Wait, no, now that I have gone through the pictures for today again, it was a pretty decently buggy day, for this summer anyway.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I wasn't sure if this was a leaf-footed bug or a squash bug, so I looked it up, and the answer is, yes. It is a leaf-footed bug. And a squash bug. Apparently there are two names for this family of bugs. It might be Acanthocephala terminalis, but don't quote me on that. As bugs go around here, this is a pretty big one - the body is about an inch long, not counting the antennae.

It can crawl from plant to plant at an impressive speed.

Random Bugs:

Candy-striped leaf hopper

Immature stinkbug. Although, I kind of think that all stinkbugs must be pretty immature, don't you think?

A few white hickory tussock moth caterpillars around today.

You can see they caught a few raindrops.

I should have gone back to look later, but I forgot; I think the one on the right is about to molt.

Spittle bug, I think. Also with a bit of rain on it.

Small milkweed bugs, juvenile.

Assassin bug

Hover fly

Another hoverfly. I am not sure if these are different species, or male and female of the same speices, because they have a different body shape.

The most dangerous plant in the backyard today. If you're an insect. Assassin bug on one branch, ambush bug on the other...

Another assassin bug

Grasshoppers are plentiful lately:

This wasp was a bit lethargic, which was very handy for photography purposes.

On the subject of insects with stingers staring at you...

Tree cricket

Long-legged flies

There were a lot of spiders around today, of quite a variety of species. After the rain it was easy to find a lot of funnel webs, because the rain makes them stand out, but I think the rain had driven them all into their tunnels, so I didn't get pictures of any of those, but I did get quite a few others - six, to be exact. Arachnid Appreciation:
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Micrathena spider. I almost walked right into this web, but spotted the spider just in time - surprising, because it was about waist height, across the path, and I am constantly walking into webs about face height that I don't see. After taking this picture I chose to go around on another path to see it from the other side, and on the way there I walked through another web - at face height. The problem is, sometimes these webs are just one or two threads strung across the path. I feel bad about breaking them, but those are my walking paths. If the spiders don't want the big, clumsy human to walk through their webs, they should build them somewhere else.

The micrathena spider from the other side.

I don't know what this one is. It was built on a cedar tree, and I would have had to be inside the tree to see from the other side. This was tiny, about the size of the head of a pin. There was another tiny spider on the same tree that was a different color, but it would not cooperate to have its picture taken.