Lazy Blogger

If you read this blog regularly then you know that I am extremely lazy about identifying insects. For the most part I don't bother to look things up, I'll just say I don't know what it is, or be very general about saying that it's a bee, or a moth, or whatever. It's not just laziness, however, that keeps me from diligently identifying every insect that I find. It's the vast impossibility of the task, and my desire not to be frustrated all of the time. The thing is, I don't have any insect field guides that have everything in them, that might be an impossible book for me to get. The books don't have everything, there are a lot of things that look very much alike (so many brown moths!), there are some insects that you can only determine species by looking under a microscope... I look things up when I am really curious. I don't bother when I think it won't be worth my time–and frequently when I do think it will be worth my time I still come away without an answer. I know, I'm making a lot of excuses. I have spent less time than I should learning certain things, but I have learned a lot compared to what I knew about insects a few years ago. And yet, sometimes I am baffled by something completely. For instance, nowadays when find an insect that is new to me I generally can at least figure out what section of the field guides to look through to try to identify it. I can tell a beetle from a Hemiptera most of the time now. When I started out, I generally had to sift through most of the book every time, but now I usually am able to narrow my search to a particular order, even if I don't remember the name of the order. But there are bugs that I have never been able to figure out, and today's Backyard Bug of the Day is one of them.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 There is a boulder in my backyard that is often covered with swarms of these tiny insects. They run around in a frantic fashion, stopping and starting, and it is very hard to photograph them because even when they do stop, they will instantly run off as soon as the camera gets close. I've always called them Gollum bugs because they remind me of the Gollum character in the 1970s cartoon of The Hobbit.

Compounding the difficulty of photographing them is the fact that when they aren't moving they are very hard to see because they blend in really well on the rock. My assumption is that they eat lichen that is growing on the rock. I have recently seen a couple on a tree, but other than that occasion the only place I have ever seen them is on this rock. And I haven't yet figured out a pattern of when they are there, and when they are not, or if they are always there and sometimes they just stay still so I don't see them.

 I have never been able to figure out what they are. They are tiny, so it's hard to get a good look at their features, but even when I do get a look, it's hard to tell even what other kinds of bugs they might be related to (which helps in trying to find them in the books. I checked all the books again today, by the way, and didn't find them). They're sort of like springtails, but not really (they have wings, though I have never seen them fly), they're sort of like Hemiptera, but not really, they're sort of like flies, but not really... you get the idea. Today, though, for the first time I saw immature specimens!

 Definitely a nymph, not a larva. That would mean they are not beetles (which was obvious anyway) or flies. I think.

 I think this nymph is an earlier instar from the one above. That one has the beginnings of wings, and this one does not.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the backyard...

I found another toad today, a different species from the one I found yesterday.

 I posted a picture the other day of a dead cicada that I found. Today I discovered that the cicada had been eaten by something, and whatever ate it left behind its wings (not lined up like this, I did that for the picture). It's not unusual for me to find random insect wings in the backyard; it would appear that a lot of things that eat insects don't care for the wings.

 Potato beetle. Yes, garden pest, but both the larvae and the adult beetles eat a plant I don't like, so I can't help but like them.

 Here's a couple of bugs for you to spot...

 Some kind of Hemiptera...

Grasshoppers were abundant today:

 Not necessarily cooperative, but abundant.

 

 Moth

I found a few caterpillars today that were not the same species I have been finding all over:

 Actually, this might be the same as one I saw yesterday. This one was a lot smaller though, and there are several species that kind of look like this.

 And this. For all I know, these two could be the same species, but that first one is an earlier instar. This one was much bigger.

I think this might be some kind of prominent. As explained in the intro to today's blog, I am too lazy to look it up (and I know I am just going to find a ton of caterpillars that look more or less just like this, and I won't be able to tell which one it is).

Arachnid Appreciation:
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I think that of all the spider species I found in the last couple of days, somehow I didn't find a six-spotted orb weaver. I found one today.

Flower crab spider feeding on a fly.