An Incomplete Picture

There's a lot of discussion about how people's lives as depicted on social media are not really representative of their real lives. They are carefully curated to show you only the most interesting things. Some people see this as a problem, but I don't. The interesting things in people's lives are, well, the interesting things. I don't need to see the mundane things in their lives, they are probably not that different from the mundane things in my life. I don't post on facebook that I just started the dishwasher. Nobody cares about that but me, and it's not even interesting to me. So what if the online version of someone's life is more exciting than their real life? If they don't want to share the bad or boring parts, that's fine with me.

This blog is also not really an accurate depiction of what it's like in my backyard, but for a sort of different reason. I don't manage to get pictures of a large number of the bugs in my backyard. Or if I do get a picture, it might not be good enough for me to share. You will never know everything I see out there. For instance, I see quite a lot of butterflies, but hardly any of them end up on this blog. They don't pose for pictures very often. I see WAY more ants than ever make it on here, because it would be boring to take pictures of ants all the time. A lot of things are too active, too fast, too inconveniently located for me to get pictures. Sometimes they are too boring for me to even want to try. So this blog is a highly curated version of my backyard, although not always because I don't want to show you things. I do my best to make it seem interesting. But if you really want the picture on how many bugs are out in the the world, you have to go out and have a look for yourself.

But here's a little taste of how buggy my backyard was today:

 There's another insect, an ant, just out of the picture.

But this is where most of the bugs were today, or many of them anyway, on this patch of milkweed. No monarch caterpillars, but lots of other things, some of which I managed to get pictures of:

Including Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Saddled leafhopper. This is an unusual picture because not only do I rarely see these, but almost every one I have ever seen has been on the front porch, attracted to the light. I have only seen a couple of them actually on a plant somewhere.

Other Bugs on the Milkweed:

 Candy striped leaf hopper

 Rove beetle, with its wings not completely tucked away, and do you see the yellow dots along the edge of the leaf?

Springtails

 There, the wings are all put away now.

 Better look at the springtails.

 Long-legged flies

Click beetle

Weevil

Not ALL of the bugs were on milkweed...

When the eastern tent caterpillars are done growing and are ready to pupate they don't do it on the tree where they hatched and spent their caterpillarhood eating, they wander off to find another place. Some of them have started to do this:

 Like this one on the blueberry bush. Oh, by the way, it rained this morning.

 Caterpillar close-up

 This one was still on the tent, and there were quite a few wriggling around inside.

Another one that has gone for a walk

 Sawfly eggs, which are laid inside a leaf

 On the back of another leaf on the same plant, they have hatched. I think some of these are very newly hatched, but you can see some have been eating already.

 On another tree

I found nine species of spiders in the backyard today for Arachnid Appreciation:
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These first two are on milkweed plants, because there's obviously a lot of bugs there for them to eat:

Bowl-and-doily spider

On milkweeed

Playing hide and seek...

 With aphid prey, I think

 This spider has had a web in the same spot for a couple of weeks. I wish I could get a better picture, but the location of the web doesn't really allow it.