Good Morning, Butterfly

I had my first monarch eclosure of the summer this morning (I was away when my previous 3 caterpillars became butterflies, so my niece had the honor of releasing those).
As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, it is obvious when a monarch butterfly is getting ready to emerge. The chrysalis no longer looks green, but instead you can clearly see the butterfly inside:

I don't remember what time I took this picture, but it was somewhere between 2 and 4 in the morning.

And by 11:00 in the morning... Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

I missed the actual moment of emergence, and this is the point she was at when I found her. She has already mostly pumped fluid into her wings to straighten them out.

Some wing close-ups:

She made a couple of short flights, from one milkweed plant to another, and then up into a tree, which is what monarchs usually seem to do.

In case you're wondering how to tell the difference between a monarch butterfly and a viceroy, which is the one I posted yesterday, here are the two side-by-side:

The monarch did not cooperate with how she held her wings, but I think you can see well enough. If you look at the hind wings (the lower ones) you'll see that the viceroy (on the right) has that thick line that goes across, and the monarch does not.

One of the two remaining caterpillars in the dining room spent most of yesterday wandering around the enclosure. Usually that is what they do when they are ready to become a chrysalis, trying to find a good spot, but this one was not nearly ready for that yesterday. I wondered if for some reason it did not like the milkweed leaves that were in there, and was looking for better food, so I went out and cut a different plant and put it in the enclosure. That seems to have done the trick; by morning it had eaten a good portion of this leaf.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

I couldn't find this moth in my book. It's about half an inch long, and I am quite taken by those false eyes.

The milkweed plants have lately been very attractive to different bugs than I am used to seeing on them:

Most years it has been small milkweed bugs, large milkweed bugs, or red milkweed beetles. This year it's bees and ants. All the time there are bees and ants on the leaves.

 

 

 I saw this wasp fly into, and then a couple of minutes later, out of one of the tubes.

 Tiny sweat bee on mountain mint

 Leaf hopper

 Leaf-footed bug

 Spotted apatelodes caterpillar

 Katydid

 Ailanthus webworm caterpillars

I found some curious things today:

 

 This appears to be a cocoon with nothing in it.

 This is a cocoon on a tree a couple of inches from where yesterday there was a white hickory tussock moth caterpillar. It's hard to tell, but it doesn't look like there's anything in it. Also, it looks like there is a hold in the front. It does look like it was made out of white and black caterpillar hairs, like the WHTMC has, and caterpillars do sometimes weave their hairs into their cocoons.

 I also found these tiny things in groups on several trees.

 Stinkbug nymph

 Ant

I found a couple more arcigera flower moths:

 

 Stinkbug

Red legged grass hopper

Katydid

Arachnid Appreciation:
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I found a couple of common house spiders on the side of the house:

This one has caught a much larger spider as prey.

I think here we have a female, the large one on the right feeding on a tree cricket (with an egg sac behind her), and on the lower left the much smaller male.

Funnel web spider let me get a little closer today before retreating into its hiding place in the crack in the tree bark.

Flower crab spider