Hair-raising

I have naturally curly hair, and as is the case for a lot of people with naturally curly hair, it is curlier when the weather is humid. I wear my hair really short, but sometimes I go quite a while without a haircut, and when I am in need of a haircut, and it is humid, it can be like a cloud of curls on top of my head. Today during my bug walk, TWICE bugs got stuck in my cloud of hair. I couldn't feel them, but I could hear their frantic buzzing as they tried to get out. And then one of them STUNG ME when I tried to free it. I don't know what kind of bugs they were. I just wish insects weren't so attracted to my hair, or my head in general. Anyway, it may be time for a haircut.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Katydid, female, and this one has wings, so it's an adult. It might be a fork-tailed bush katydid, but I am never confident in these identifications.

 Another katydid, also female, immature. I am not sure if these are the same species or not. There are a lot of different kinds of katydids. I am listening to a few of them right now–they seem to be dominating the nighttime insect choir.

 Katydids always look so annoyed.

 After two years of not seeing any monarch butterflies I am seeing them on a regular basis in the last week or so. My first thought when I saw this one today was that maybe it was the one that eclosed in my dining room yesterday, but from the looks of this one, it has got some miles on it.

 She's resting on this raspberry vine, but she did eventually fly over to the milkweed and lay some eggs.

 I found this white hickory tussock moth caterpillar on the milkweed today, which was surprising, as I have never seen one there. I don't think this is a food plant for the whtmc because I checked it out a few times as I was wandering around the backyard, and at one point it looked like it was trying to eat the leaf, but ultimately it didn't, and last I saw of it, it was walking back down the stem.

My blog isn't really an accurate depiction of what I see in my backyard. I don't even bother to take pictures of a lot of insects, because they are too common to be interesting, or I already know that they won't cooperate. Some are just hard to photograph. For instance, I have been seeing a lot of bees and wasps lately, but not able to get shots of them. I did get one today, though:

 Wasp, on milkweed.

 I found this bunch of green lacewing larvae, recently hatched, all still clinging to their cluster of eggs (not the cluster of eggs I found yesterday).

 Buffalo tree hopper

 Monarchs aren't the only caterpillars in the house. I found this cabbage white caterpillar on the flour canister in the kitchen. It had obviously hitched a ride inside on the broccoli my husband brought in from the garden. I did not adopt this caterpillar, though.

 Weevil

Another weevil, with an ant. I have no idea what's going on here.

 I think this might be a spittle bug. Or a hopper of some kind.

 Sawfly larva, I think. Anyway, way too many prolegs to be a caterpillar.

 Pair of tiny beetles

 Dragonfly

 Primrose moth

 Some other kind of larva

 Ladybeetles

 Case bearing beetle larva. With its case made of its own droppings.

Assassin bug

Arachnid Appreciation:
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This spider is, I believe, trying to envenomate a needle from a cedar tree. Well, some spiders don't have very good eyesight, and I have occasionally mistaken one of those needles for a caterpillar.

I think this is a new species of spider for me.