A Rare View

Today I managed to do something I have hardly ever been able to do. I got a picture of the dorsal side of a hairstreak butterfly's wings.
Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Gray hairstreak. They almost NEVER sit with their wings open like this, in my experience. I catch glimpses of the color on the dorsal side of their wings when they are flying, or when they rub their wings against each other, but I don't get to see this! And it was so cooperative! Lovely little butterfly! And extra-nice view, because usually hairstreaks have prettier and more interesting colors on the dorsal side of their wings.

 Case in point.

 Picture taken less than a second before this butterfly landed on my camera lens. I thought it took off because the bee pushed it off, but now I wonder if the ant clinging to it had something to do with it. Needless to say, I did not see the ant when I took this picture. Man, this would be an amazing shot if the butterfly was in focus!

The milkweed flower clumps (I am sure there is a more appropriate word for that, but I don't know what it is. Bract? I don't really know what that means...) were sometimes host to a lot of bugs at once. Here is the hairstreak, a thick-headed fly, and a skipper... and there may be something else in there, ants or something...

There are at least four insects here, but I think the tiny bee might only be findable if you know where it is.

Incoming!

The milkweed flowers were popular today. I didn't have time to do a complete bug walk, and that is partly because I spent so much time hanging around the milkweed patch in the middle of the lawn. It was mostly bees, but also butterflies, including the hairstreak that is Backyard Bug of the Day, and this eastern tiger swallowtail that hung around for over an hour, moving from plant to plant, and back again. Sometimes when I got too close it would take off and fly around above for a minute before coming back:

Sometimes there butterfly and bees share the same flower clump peacefully, and sometimes either the butterfly will whack the bees with its wings, or the bees will shove the butterfly off. I don't understand the dynamics completely.

Lace bug, also on milkweed

Some support for my theory about the dead katydids on my back porch under the wind chimes (go back a few days in posts if you don't know what I mean):

I saw a wasp/bee enter this tube carrying what I thought was just a clump of grass, but when I looked closely I saw that there was a katydid in there, and realized that the green thing I saw the wasp holding must be this katydid, stunned and ready to bee food for the wasp larva. The wasp eventually pulled the katydid and the grass deeper into the tube. I waited and waited for the wasp to come back out so I could get a shot of it, but then the hairstreak butterfly showed up, and I went after that with my camera instead.

Three gypsy moth caterpillars on a tree trunk, all looking like they are about ready to pupate.

Another one that I think may have already started the process.

The unicorn caterpillar is still looking like a curled, dried leaf edge.

  I don't know what this is...

 ... but from the legs and prolegs I am thinking more like a sawfly larva than a beetle larva...

 Looper caterpillar

 Stinkbug nymph