Walking Stick

Today, for the first time in weeks, the sun was shining in my backyard (for most of the day) and I saw a bug that just made my day (that makes me sound like a geek, but so be it). There are days when I don't see a lot of bugs and it's disappointing, and there are days when I don't see a lot of bugs but I see one bug that is amazing and makes me not care that there weren't a lot of other bugs, and this was one of those days.
It's not a new bug for me or my backyard. But it is one that I have seen so rarely that it is still special and exciting to see one. It used to be the one bug I was looking for, and I do actually look for it still, never thinking I will find one (and frankly, it's hard to see, even though it's a pretty big bug). And what is it?

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Stick insect! I think this is a northern walking stick, aka common stick bug.

As you probably know, insects have six legs, so looking at this you may think that it is missing a pair of legs, but it holds the front pair of legs out in front of it when it is trying to look like a stick in order to go unnoticed. It does have antennae, too, and the legs and antennae are just there together.

I spent years trying to find one of these in my backyard, and was thrilled when I found one last year. At the time I did some reading about them, and found out that in the fall is when they come down from the trees to lay eggs, so there was no point in looking around for them in the spring and summer. But now that it's autumn, I have been on the lookout, particularly in the area where I saw one last year, which was near the base of an oak tree, which is one of their food plants. Well, this one was in a different part of the backyard from the other one last year, but it was near the base of an oak. I actually gasped when I saw it. Seeing one once last year was not enough to take away the excitement of seeing one.

You can kind of see the legs and antennae here.

I took a lot of pictures of this and then continued with my bug walk, feeling like I didn't care if I found anything else, that this was a successful day of bug hunting regardless. But I kept going back to check if it was still there, and whenever I did, I had a hard time finding it again. It stayed in the same area, on the same few plants, but it looks so much like a stick, or like the tall, brown stalks of grass near there that even know it was there, and looking for it, it was hard to spot.

Here you can see that it is not holding its legs out ahead of it, and the antennae are spread apart:

But when I got close, it pulled its legs out in front again, trying to look like a stick again.

The stick insect was still there when my husband got home, so I showed it to him. Here it is on his hand, to give you an idea of its size.

It seems like more mushrooms pop up every day. Actually, they probably do:

These are just as vibrant as they look in the picture, which makes me wonder how I could possibly have missed them yesterday. I can't imagine they just came up today, although mushrooms are very dynamic and they do seem to grow visibly fast.

The mourning dove fledglings were hanging out in the vegetable garden again today. Well, two were in the garden, two were outside the fence, and one very stupidly kept trying to fly through the fence. The tree next to the garden is where the mourning doves had a nest much earlier in the year, and I wonder if they had another brood there in recent weeks and I just didn't notice.

It is fortunate that I was already satisfied with my bug walk when I found the stick insect near the start, because I didn't find a lot of other insects. Other Bugs:

Wasp

 Stink bug

 A pair of speckled sharpshooters

 Here you can see the lower one excreting a drop of honeydew.

 This was a pretty startling find on my picnic table. I never would have guessed that these were the same species of bee; that is an amazing size difference between male and female.

 A species of cricket that has not appeared in a while

This caterpillar is still hanging around in the same cluster of leaves on the oak tree, but the number of leaves there are dwindling as it eats them:

I think you can kind of see here how well that camouflage works, green like the leaf, but with markings that look like a brown and yellow leaf edge.

It's been a few days since I have seen any butterflies; today I saw three, and got pictures of two:

Mourning cloak. It's looking quite worn out, but mourning cloaks overwinter as adults, so this one could still be flying next spring. They are usually the first butterfly species I see in the spring, and they usually look pretty beat up. They overwinter in cracks of tree bark, wood piles, and places like that. Still, winter is a couple of months away...

Pearl crescent

Crane fly

Beetle

Hopper nymph

Brown hooded owlet moth caterpillar. I mentioned this one the other day when I took a picture of every caterpillar I saw on that day, as one that I expect to see this time of year, but did not see that day. And today, it was on a plant right next to my back porch.

Small milkweed bug. This may be the first one I have seen this year; if not, it has certainly been a long while since I have seen one.

I didn't see anywhere near as many spiders today, but I did see a few today that were not part of the spider bonanza yesterday. Arachnid Appreciation:

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Bowl and doily spider. I didn't see one of these yesterday.

This is the only species of jumping spider I know the name of: bold jumping spider. I love them for their amazing green chelicerae, which I was unable to get a picture of. This is another species I didn't see yesterday.

Jumping spider with fly prey

Flower crab spider

For the third time in about a week (okay 8 days) I saw a snake in my backyard. This has been the snakiest year ever since we bought this land 19 years ago. This could actually be the same snake I saw a couple of days ago, since it was in the same general area, but I can't tell. Backyard Reptile of the Day (still hoping for a tortoise some day):
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Fungus and Eight-Legged Wonders

I saw quite a few bugs flying by my windows today, just at moments when I happened to glance out, and so I was expecting to find a lot of bugs when I went outside for my bug walk, but that was not the case. What I did find was a lot of spiders, at least 15 different species, including possibly 2 that I have never seen before. Now, if you are arachnophobic, don't worry, I am still going to put those at the end of the blog. But this is just a heads up that there's not much else to see.
Except fungus. Due to our very wet weather lately there are mushrooms and other fungus of many species around the backyard. It's hard for me to take pictures of them right now because of problems with my knee that make it hard to get pictures at those angles, but here are a few:

Some newly fledged mourning doves were hanging out in the vegetable garden (we only planted half of the garden this year, and they are in the overgrown half). I scared them and one of their parents away once (by accident), but the young ones came back. I know they could fly, but when I came back to the garden and saw them there without a parent, they didn't fly away, they just tried to escape through the chicken wire fence (which they could not do, so I left in order to not distress them). The parent landed on the other side of the fence just as I was walking away. I have read that the parent mourning dove will pretend to be injured to draw predators away from their fledglings (baby birds that have recently left the nest), which I have seen briefly before, but I guess in this case it wasn't necessary because I left before the parent arrived.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Wasp on autumn joy sedum. This may even have been BBotD already this year, I don't know. But I didn't get anything else better so... here it is. I think this is a species of potter's wasp.

I'll try to go easy on caterpillar pictures today, because of Monday's overload, but I had to get pictures of a couple of them:

 I can't remember the name of this one now... It still rests in that position that looks anything but restful. It is on a different leaf of the oak tree today, having eaten the leaf it was on the other day.

 

 

 I can see how its coloring would be good camouflage when it's along the edge of a leaf; the green matches the leaf, and the brown and yellow look like a curled, browning leaf edge.

 

 I took this one just because they look so cute with the water droplets stuck to them. Banded tussock moth caterpillar.

This woolly bear didn't just have water droplets, part of its fuzz looks downright waterlogged.

Once again I got the Orthoptera trifecta of cricket, katydid, and grasshopper:

 I don't know what's going on here with this cricket.

Katydid

 Bottle fly on autumn joy sedum

 Some kind of hopper that has recently molted; the lower object is its recently shed exoskeleton

Closer look

 Ironically, I often have trouble getting good pictures of this species of ladybeetle because they don't like to sit still, and when I saw that this one was being fed upon by an assassin bug I thought this was my big chance, but the assassin bug kept rolling it over, trying to find a good place to insert its proboscis, and so even though it was dead it could not stay still.

 Stinkbug feeding on sawfly larva

 Bee

 Sweat bee

 Colorado potato beetle

 And now of all of those fascinating, fabulous spiders. Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Not all of these pictures are up to my posting standards, but I am posting them just to show the many different spiders I saw.

Species #1:

The rain gauge has always been a popular hideout for insects, and even more so for spiders–which makes sense, because obviously there are a lot of prey insects available. Anyway, when I emptied the rain gauge of the almost 5 inches of rain from yesterday I found this unfortunate nursery web spider hiding behind it. It is missing half of its legs. I can imagine that a certain number of its legs are redundancies, but it seems like it would be difficult to get around with both rear legs missing on one side. I didn't see it move at all, though, so I don't know how well it does.

A nursery web spider in better shape.

Species #2:

First, I want to mention that the reason this picture is kind of hazy is because it was cool in the house this morning, but warm and humid outside, so as soon as I walked outside with my cool-from-the-house camera, the lens fogged up. I thought I had managed to clear it up when I saw this jumping spider, but not quite.

Here's the non-foggy version.

In fact, several of the species I saw were jumping spiders. Species #3:

Species #4:

These next two were on the same leaf–Species #5:

They don't look the same, but I wonder if it's possible that they are male and female of the same species. I know almost nothing about jumping spider identification, but often with spiders the male and female of the species differ greatly not just in size but in other aspects of their appearance. Of course, it really could just be that there were two random jumping spiders on the same leaf. I didn't see them interact at all, they were just mostly trying to avoid my camera.

Species #6?

Of course, sometimes the jumping spiders trying to avoid the camera lead to me being able to get different views of the same spider. Dorsal...

... Front view.

This might be a cross orb weaver, or something related–Species #7:

It thinks I can't see it if it pulls its legs in close. It zoomed between two milkweed plants like it was ziplining, curled up on this leaf to "hide" from me, and when I stepped away ziplined up (which I think is impossible in normal ziplining, but spiders are special that way) to the leaf of a tree. I wonder if tomorrow I will find a web there.

I think this is the same species, but on its web.

Hiding out (I think this is another nursery web spider, so not another species).

Species #8:

Crab spider

Species #9:

I wish I had been able to get closer to this one, but it was camera shy. This is one I have never seen before...

And mere feet away... Species #10:

 ...Another one I have never seen before. This was tiny, and a little bit odd. It is one of those spiders that thinks you can't see it if it stretches its legs out, and I probably wouldn't have ever noticed it, or known it was a spider if I did, if it hadn't been moving.

 

I tried to get a better, more close-up picture, with indifferent results. I could not get a shot of the other side.

Species #11:

 Flower crab spider with fly prey

Species #12:

 Orchard spider

Species #13:

 The funnel web spider that has been living in a crack in a tree trunk in front of the house was hiding up in her lair today; her web was badly damaged by the storm yesterday.

Species #14:

 There is a little community of common house spiders near the cellar door.

 They all have egg sacs now.

Species #15:

 Arrow shaped micrathena

 I did see other jumping spiders that may have been other species, I just didn't get pictures of them.