The Bugs in the Backyard: Wilted

I spent an absurd amount of time this afternoon staring at a dead plant. It was the wilted morning glory vine, and part of what interested me I will show at the end of the blog, but in part I was just interested in how interesting the plant was to insects. It attracted a lot of flies:

(The blue specks are bits of paint that flaked off the drop cloth I used to cover the plant to try to keep it alive when we had a frost). I have a hypothesis about why there were so many bugs attracted to a plant that not only no longer has flowers but is dead. For a lot of living tissues, whether they are in plants or animals, because the cells are so full of water, and water expands when it freezes, the cells will burst when they freeze. Obviously it doesn't happen to all cells; some insects, for example, have an anti-freeze chemical in their bodies that keeps this from happening. I guess a lot of plants must have it too, which is why they didn't all die when the frost hit. What I think happened is that the cells in the morning glory plant burst, and that made whatever liquid is inside the plant leak out, and so all of these insects were there feeding on that liquid. In fact, if you look at yesterday's blog, the crane fly that landed on the dead morning glory was obviously feeding. I think that the bursting of the plant's cells made food available. I have no way of testing this hypothesis, so I'll never know if it's true, but that's what it looks like to me.

And there were a LOT of flies on the vines today:

Even a hoverfly.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

One of those tiny leaf hoppers I have such a hard time photographing because they won't sit still. They come in several patterns.

Other Bugs:

I saw a few stinkbugs today...

And candy striped leaf hoppers hiding in plain sight:

Banded tussock moth caterpillar

Red-legged grasshopper

A couple of case moth caterpillars:

The first bumblebee I have seen in a while

Sometimes I see something on a tree or other plant and am not sure if I am looking at a bug, or just some kind of mark on the trunk:

This one is a moth.

Assassin bug:

Field cricket

Bee. You'll see more of this particular insect below...

Sweat bee. Dandelions have been appearing again this week, like a second springtime.

Springtail

Crane fly

Beetle

Winter firefly

The arachnid I do NOT appreciate:

This is the first tick I have seen in months.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Back to the morning glory vines:

The first thing I saw when I looked at the morning glory vines today was this nursery web spider. It seemed like a perfect place for a spider, because there were a lot of insects on the plant. So I watched for a while, to see if any would end up being the spider's lunch.

I also thought about a lot of aspects of the situation. Is it frustrating to be an ambush predator and see a lot of prey around but not have any come close enough to catch? How well can the spider see the insects around it? (Some spiders don't have very good vision at all, but some, like jumping spiders, do). How well can the flies see the spider? It's right out there in the open, but the nursery web spiders I have seen are always right out there in the open. On the other hand, I have also never seen one with prey. But they exist, so they must get things to eat.

This one got close, but not exactly in view of the spider. Can you see it?

I saw this one inching closer, and was sure this was the spider's chance–and my chance to see the spider catch something. I got distracted for one second, maybe less, and when I looked back the fly was airborne and the spider was moving back into place; it had obviously tried to strike and missed, and the fly got away.

There were a lot of jumping spiders around again today:

In a lot of cases when I am taking pictures I try to get as close as possible to my subject, but I often have to do that in increments, seeing how close I can get before it decides it doesn't want to cooperate any more: