The Bugs' Buffet

Like I keep saying, I think the real law of nature is that if there is something to eat, there will be something to eat it. So, I provided blooming flowers in my yard, which have nectar and pollen to eat, and there are insects coming along to feed there (and only one of the plants is in bloom at the moment).

Insects on Chrysanthemums:

 Flower fly

 Another species of flower fly (I did try looking these up, but there are many species, and they are all quite similar).

 Mosquito. Okay, not every pollinator is wonderful. But not all mosquitoes bite, either. Many of them (males of most species, I think), eat only flower nectar.

 Sweat bee

 Hover fly

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Treehopper. Possibly Telamona gemma. Or maybe Telamona molaris.

The Order of the Day would definitely have to be Hemiptera; most of the bugs I found were from this order, which means they really ARE bugs, not just insects, because the order Hemiptera are called True Bugs:

 Lots of candy striped leaf hoppers sunning themselves on leaves.

 Another leaf hopper

 Don't know what this one is.

There were a lot of stinkbugs around, specifically green stinkbugs:

There's a candy striped leaf hopper in this shot, too, but you probably can't see it very well because it's out of focus (upper left, if you want to look for it).

 It's probably obvious to you, but this one was tricky to spot at the time. It is sharing its plant with another insect that was plentiful today, a ladybeetle.

 Different vantage point.

 Leaf footed bug missing a leg.

 I'm not sure if this is a western conifer seedbug or not.

My biggest surprise today:

 Comma butterfly

 So different on the other side of its wings.

 Twice-stabbed ladybeetle

 There were still a few rove beetles hanging out on their rock.

 White hickory tussock moth caterpillar

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I think I have mentioned before that one way for spiders to get around it to send out a line of silk on the wind and let the wind carry it to attach somewhere, and then the spider can walk across it. That is what this spider is doing here...

 ... and here, which is the point where I realized the thread was attaching to me and my monopod. I had to redirect the spider when it began to walk across.

Still trying. I am not sure if spiders have a particular destination in mind when they do this, but it's pretty much up to the wind.

Here you can see the thread.

 Here's its neighbor on the wilted morning glory. I wonder if these two spiders are the ones (two of them, anyway) that were facing off on this vine last week.

 Tiny spiderling...

 

 Flower crab spider hiding in autumn joy sedum

 I didn't notice when I took its picture, but the spider was not alone...

Planting for Pollinators

I bought some plants this past weekend that are late-blooming perennials, in order to provide late season nourishment to pollinators. I wasn't sure why I was doing it, since I haven't seen any pollinators lately, but the flowers exist, so I decided I wanted them in my yard, because I like bugs and wanted to do this nice thing for them. Maybe that makes me sound like a weirdo, I don't care. I did think it might be an exercise in futility (a couple of the plants are full of buds, but not actually blooming, and they may be running out of time for that), and yesterday there were no pollinators attracted to the one plant that actually has blooms on it right now, but today...

 Huge flower fly on this chrysanthemum. It looks like a daisy to me, but according to the nursery, it's a perennial chrysanthemum. I am a fan of perennials, because I hate gardening, so the idea that every autumn I am going to have these late-blooming flowers is really wonderful. I hope the bugs like them, too.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is a really tiny hopper nymph of some kind. I don't know if I have ever seen one before; I know I have never seen one this small. It's surprising to me that there would be one in such an early instar at this time of year, but I suppose they can possibly overwinter in any instar? I have no idea.

Nearby was this:

 Another hopper nymph, and it could be a later instar of the same species. This I am pretty sure I have seen before.

Everything else (and there's not much) is the usual stuff I have been seeing lately:

 Grasshoppers in the rock garden...

 ... ants, also in the rock garden...

 Tree cricket...

... whatever kind of cricket this is...

 ... tiny moth on the garden shed

Enjoyment

I've been enjoying a bit of arachno-centric entertainment today. I watched the latest Dr. Who episode, which was about spiders (and really awesome, though probably terrifying for arachnophobes), read a couple of articles online about spiders, and spent some time watching the jumping spider that currently lives in my bathroom. I am glad I replaced fear with fascination regarding spiders. Not even so much because it's great to be rid of fear–I was never that afraid of spiders, more just mildly unnerved by them. But they are such fascinating little creatures that I now realize what I was missing all those years when I would squish them on sight instead of watching them to see what they're up to. I am sorry, spiders, for whatever I inflicted on you in the past. Dr Who, by the way, and probably predictably, was pro-spider in this episode. She definitely was not for squishing them.

In spite of all that ruminating, I don't have a lot of spiders to show you today, and as usual, what I have will be at the end of the blog, so no need to flee yet, arachnophobes.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think this might be a new species of leaf hopper for me. It looks like a bleached candy striped leaf hopper, but I am pretty sure it's a different species.

Other Bugs:

 I haven't seen a white hickory tussock moth caterpillar in a while, but this one was walking along the back porch steps when I went out today.

 If you look closely you can see that there's a pretty big chunk out of this leaf hopper's elytron. Another insect battered by the end of the season.

 Plume moth

 Ladybeetle

The rove beetles were swarming on that rock again:

 There were some skirmishes.

 I believe that there were some beetles that were interested in courtship, but they were unable to find another beetle that wanted to go along with that.

 Rove beetles tuck in their wings by lifting up their back ends, and today I discovered that they also do that to shove off unwanted suitors.

 If it was actually true that you could forecast what kind of winter is coming by the bands of color on a woolly bear caterpillar, and wider black bands meant a hard winter ahead, we'd be in trouble.

Mom, scroll fast past the next two pictures:

Oddly, I don't often see the faces of woolly bear caterpillars, because they keep them kind of bent down most of the time, but this one was nibbling on the grass.

Close up of the face.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Two jumping spiders were the only spiders I saw today (outside my bathroom):