The Bugs in the Backyard: Searching for Order

Yesterday I couldn't do a bug walk because it rained–poured, really–all day. We got 4 inches of rain–which is about what we average for a month–in less than 24 hours, and this isn't even the part of the country with a hurricane approaching. Sometimes on rainy days there will still be bugs around, bees visiting flowers, mostly, and I will either see them when I go out to get the mail or through the window, but yesterday I didn't see any insects out in that weather. They all came out today, though! My backyard was so ALIVE. I could hear them, and I could see them. There were bugs everywhere. I don't even know how to present them, how to order them... by Order (of which I think I found seven: Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Hemiptera, Orthoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera, and one more I don't know the name of... Okay, I'll look it up... Dermaptera. Also Arachnids)? By foodplant? Predators and prey? Larvae and Imagos? Just post them in the order that they were taken? No, that would be very disorienting, there are a lot of pictures today (I took 470 pictures). Maybe a combination of some of these things. But I'll start with...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I wasn't even on my bug walk when I found this beetle, I had just gone out to get the mail and decided to empty the rain gauge first and I spotted this gorgeous beetle nearby. I had to go inside and get my camera and change into my tick repellent pants. This insect was in an area where I had to wade through some brush and thorns to get to it, and I couldn't wear shorts for that. Anyway, I've been lamenting the lack of beetles in the backyard lately, so I was excited to see this one, one of my favorite beetles (my favorite Beatle is Ringo Starr, but that's a different topic). If it was up to me this would be called a princess beetle, because it looks like my childhood version of what a princess dress is like, but it is actually an oil beetle. You probably can't really tell from the picture, but it's a pretty big insect, by local standards–at least an inch long.

One fun thing that beetles like to do in order to defend themselves against threats is pretend to be dead. That's what the beetle is doing here. That is the nicer of its defense mechanisms, the other being to exude a nasty, oily substance from its joints that will cause painful blisters on your skin if you get it on yourself. I didn't know that last time I saw one of these, and I got very lucky because I annoyed the beetle enough that it did that, and I fortunately did not get any on my skin. Now I know better and am careful not to touch them or annoy them that much.

After seeing very few beetles for the last few weeks, there were several around today in addition to the Backyard Bug of the Day:

Today there were several kinds of beetles in the backyard (well, there are probably at least a hundred every day, I just don't see them). This one was on the goldenrod; I have never seen this kind of beetle on goldenrod before. It looks more like a ground beetle than a flower beetle.

[Edit: December 31, 2018]:

I'm going through pictures for calendars (so late!) and have noticed something in this shot that I did not see three months ago when I took it... Can you see it?

Itty bitty looper caterpillar! [End edit]

And another beetle; Colorado potato beetle. I know it's a garden pest, but I can't help thinking they're cute.

And a ladybeetle.

And a weevil, which is a beetle.

Other Bugs:

This picture is not sideways, the milkweed plant is; the rain yesterday has given most of the milkweed that was still standing a definite angle. Today I noticed that the leaves are mostly covered with flies, of which you can see several species here. I think there's about a dozen in this picture. I looked it up and the bugs are probably attracted to honeydew on the leaves from the aphids. Also, that black film is a fungus. So... Not really healthy plants. But very attractive to ants, bees, and flies.

And wasps. I know this is a terrible picture, it's the only one I got, just as the wasp was about to fly away, but look, it's blue underneath!

A variety of insects sharing a leaf.

The autumn joy sedum is wildly popular this year, which is a little weird because the first couple of years I had it in my garden there were hardly any insects attracted to it at all. I found that puzzling, because it seems like something bees would love, but there were never any on those flowers. This year, though, it is attracting a wide variety of insects (which really isn't weird, come to think of it, because it's a flower, of course it's attractive to insects):

Like flies.

Many flies.

And wasps:

An uncooperative one...

... okay, that's better.

Quite a few caterpillars to be seen today:

Woolly bear (Isabella tiger moth caterpillar)

White hickory tussock moth

Also WHTMC

Fall webworm

White marked tussock moth caterpillar

Banded tussock moth caterpillar. Lots of tussock moths around here, apparently.

I found two color variants today.

There were a lot of moths around, too, mostly fluttering away as I approached, but I got a few pictures:

Off the subject of insects for a moment, I found another egg shell:

A huge, adorable, orange ant:

I think that grasshoppers must lay their eggs in the rock garden, because during the early instars of their lives that is the only place I tend to see them, but once they get their wings they venture away from there, and I start to see them in other parts of the backyard:

Mostly on goldenrod.

It's a very popular flower.

I found this dead cicada on the ground, with what looks like a fairly large insect egg attached to it.

This species of fly is so hard to photograph well...

This is the best I could get after weeks of trying.

I was curious to see if these little larva would still be on the milkweed leaf, or if they would have been washed away by the heavy rain yesterday, but they held firm.

The rock garden was once again full of insects, mostly crickets scurrying under the plants, and grasshoppers bopping around. And resting on the rocks:

I was going to say they were sunning themselves, but there was no sunshine.

This is a sign of how many insects there were in my backyard today–they were crowded together everywhere. Funny that this grasshopper and this caterpillar have a sort of similar look to them.

I couldn't find this in my book... I'll check again later if I have time... [Edit: I checked. I could not find it in the book.]

I thought that a monarch butterfly fluttered by me, but if you look closely (which I couldn't do as it was flying, it was too fast)...

(It's hard to get a picture of a butterfly in flight).

... it's actually a viceroy.

I didn't see as many butterflies today, but the eastern tailed blue was back:

It seems to like the rock garden, and I don't know why, because nothing is blooming there right now.

Pearl crescent

I often wonder how self-aware insects are regarding what they look like. How do they know what it is that they blend in with?

Today was another day when I found all of the Orthoptera (katydid, grasshopper, and cricket).

I wish I could find some other species of katydids. Lately it's just been this one all over the place.

Cricket

I don't dare ever choose an earwig for BBotD anymore because there has always been a hue and cry when I have done it before. People hate them. Still, I think they are quite strikingly handsome insects. This one is a female; you can tell from the relatively small pinchers on her back end.

Today there were more hoppers around:

Sharpshooter

I am not sure if this is a leaf hopper or a plant hopper. If it wasn't for the time constraints tonight I would look it up... [Edit: I looked it up. It's a plant hopper, Acanalonia conica].

Leaf hopper

Like I said, the backyard was very crowded today.

I found a variety of assassin bugs, too:

And some stinkbugs:

This one has the accurate, if boring, name of green stinkbug.

I think this is a brown marmorated stinkbug, but I am not sure.

Just like the insects, the spiders were out in force today, so there's a lot to appreciate in Arachnid Appreciation:
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I can't remember the name of this spider, but it is an orb weaver, and it tries to make itself invisible by stretching out its legs in a line with its long, thin body.

And when that failed, and I spooked it, it scurried to the edge of its web.

There were Daddy-long-legs on the autumn joy sedum.

Arrow shaped micrathena with candy striped leaf hopper prey.

I spotted this orb weaver building a web:

I meant to go check on it later, hoping it would be finished and I could get a better look at it for ID purposes, but I forgot. I hope it will still be there tomorrow.