I Am Not a Scientist

Let's talk a little bit about science. Specifically, let's talk about why I am not a scientist. I started taking pictures of the bugs in my backyard in 2012, because I got a macro lens for my camera, which meant that I could take pictures of the bugs in my backyard. At that point I knew next to nothing about bugs. There were entire orders of insects that I didn't even know existed, and I had a lot of wrong information in my head about the ones I did know existed. And most of what I knew that was correct was very rudimentary; I knew that caterpillars made cocoons and came out of them as butterflies or moths (come to think of it, that was some of the wrong information; butterfly caterpillars become a chrysalis, but only moth caterpillars make cocoons, inside which they become chrysalides. Unless that is wrong, I read it somewhere...), but I had no idea what was going on inside those cocoons. Anyway, this is my sixth year of observing and photographing the insects in my backyard, and while observation is a step in science, and taking pictures is definitely a way of recording what's happening, I don't keep data. There is nothing quantifiable in what I do. It's just me looking at stuff and having a mental sense of what's going on. I am not proving anything.
Case in point: I have spent the last week complaining that there just aren't any bugs around, and saying that it's not normal. But last night after I wrote my blog, all woeful about there being no bugs, I looked back at my blog posts from the same date on the previous three years (I have been photographing the bugs in my backyard for 6 summers, but this is only my 4th year blogging about it), and lo and behold, I say the exact same thing every year on that date. Okay, it's an exaggeration, I think I only said that exact same thing one other year, but the same idea was conveyed. So, I think there are supposed to be more bugs around on the 15th of June, but I am not actually recording the number of bugs. The funniest thing is, one of the posts had almost the exact lineup of bugs as one of the days this week. I'm like a broken record of the circle of life.

Anyway, today I didn't get to do a full bug walk because it started to rain when I was out there. At first it was just drizzling, so I figured I could just go under the trees, but then it pretty quickly started to rain in earnest. And then there was almost nothing on the porch when I went out this evening, so I didn't even get to supplement much with that. BUT I did find something new to be Backyard Bug of the Day on the porch, so it was still worth it.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 

 I don't know what kind of moth this is, but it's pretty amazing. A lot of moths have incredible camouflage, looking like dried leaves or blending in well to tree bark, but this one's wings actually are wrapped around it in such a way as to make it look like a broken twig. I can only imagine how well this blends in on a tree. Even though it is pink. I would love to see this in the daytime, in a natural setting. On the other hand, for all I know I have seen it a million times, and not really seen it, if you know what I mean.

 I wasn't successful at getting the face and the body in focus at the same time. It's hard to take side-view pictures of things on walls...

Other bugs:

 A lot of long-legged flies were around today.

 Also a lot of flies like this, sitting still on plants, looking like sentinels.

 Katydid nymph

 I think this might be called a toad hopper. At any rate, it's a hopper of some kind.

My guess is that this is a spider egg sac, or at least some kind of egg sac.
 
Arachnid Appreciation:
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