The Bugs in the Backyard: Poor Tree

I didn't notice at the time, but apparently it was really windy last night. I found out when I walked out the back door and saw that the back porch tree had been blown down, broken. I am very disappointed about this. I really loved back porch tree. I figured my husband would be pleased, because he didn't like having a tree growing through the back porch–he kept saying it was going to tear the house apart, but he let it grow there because I loved it, and I think he felt bad when he saw it. It was a charming tree. I am not even sure what kind it was–no, actually, it would be more accurate to say I really didn't know what kind it was. It might have been a poplar. I knew that ultimately in the battle between tree and back porch that the back porch would win, but I am still sad about it. That tree harbored many interesting bugs through the course of its life. I am sure all of the ants that have been living in it this year, tending their flocks of aphids, found it to be quite a shock:

There were ants crawling around the broken base where it is stuck fast between the boards of the porch. You can see why it fell, the trunk was only about half an inch thick, and as it got taller and leafier, it was obviously susceptible to wind. But I am still sad that it broke, and I feel bad for these poor, confused ants.

I don't know what that little nymph is, but it also had a home in the back porch tree, I think.

Backyard Bugs of the Day:

This is the second grasshopper I have seen this year, and the first I have been able to get a picture of. It was in the rock garden...

... and tried rather hard to hide among the leaves of the ground cover, creeping myrtle.

I saw a tiny grasshopper nymph, too, which hopped away before I could get a picture of it, but I looked around until I found it again:

Then I realized I might not have found it again, I might have found a different one altogether, because there were a LOT of grasshopper nymphs in the rock garden.

There might even have been more than one species, based on the colors, but they also just might have been different instars of the same species.

Also in the rock garden:

Dragonfly. Female blue dasher, I think. The male is blue.

Sawfly larva

The space underneath the rain gauge has always been popular with insects and spiders, and lately it has been home to a colony of ants. It is not a good place for a colony of ants, and a lot of these eggs (or larva?) fell to the ground when I pulled the rain gauge out to empty it today.

Weevil

Katydid nymp

Black firefly

I found a new (to me and my backyard) species of sawfly larva today. It does a similar threat display to the other ones I have posted before, but while those hold on with their front legs and wave their back ends around, these hold on with their prolegs and rear up in the front. The one you see in the background here kept flopping around, and dropping from needle to needle on this pine tree.

I think this is a gypsy moth that has died from the fungus. While this year has not been anywhere near as bad as the last two for gypsy moth infestation, it has been pretty bad. I haven't been finding a lot of them, though I do find several every day, but I know there are more than I am seeing. How do I know this? The ground under some trees is covered in frass. So I may not be seeing them down low, but they are definitely up in those trees in some numbers. This particular tree had about half a dozen of them on its trunk. One was alive (I changed that), and the others were dead from the fungus. I have been finding a lot more alive than dead from fungus, though, so in general I don't think it's doing much.

Crane fly

There were lots of bees around today; there are several things blooming in the backyard that are attracting them, mostly raspberries and milkweed.

Ladybeetle larva

More recently hatched ladybeetle larva. The one above was about 3 times as long as this one.

There is something else, something quite tiny, photobombing the ladybeetle larva here. (They are crawling on the picnic umbrella, which is lying down on the picnic table because the wind broke it, too).