Up Front

Today it wasn't really necessary to do a walk around my entire backyard (though I did), because almost all of the bugs that I found were in one area, in front of the rocks down by the street. This is one of those days when the title of Backyard Bug of the Day is inaccurate because I found it in the front yard. But the title is what it is, and so all of those bugs that I found in front of my house are still backyard bugs.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 American copper butterfly.

 Semi-cooperative. It kept flying away before I could get close.

 Then it finally landed on the most popular flower of the day, the asters. Note that there are other insects feeding on the same plant, a sweat bee and a stilt bug. Also, check out the butterfly's curly tongue.

 All three stuck around for quite a while, not at all concerned with other insects, only with feeding.

 

 I had a hard time getting a shot of this side of the wings.

 

 

 Eventually another butterfly came and joined in.

 I think this is a gray hairstreak (I think the one a couple of days ago was also a gray hairstreak). It's hard to say, though, with so much missing from its wings. That is usually the part of a hairstreak's wings where there will be colorful (usually orange) markings that help to identify it.

 This is a very rare site for me; I hardly ever get even a glimpse of the dorsal side of a hairstreak's wings.

Also by the rocks in front of the house:

Bumblebee

 Cricket

 Striped garden caterpillars

From the Backyard:

 Candy striped leaf hopper on autumn joy sedum

 Some kind of caterpillar on autumn joy sedum. I don't think I have seen this kind before.

 Asters are very popular.

 Katydid on the new rain gauge

There was a tree that had a lot of arthropods on its trunk:

 A pair of crane flies

 

 Several crane flies landed there. They looked like they were dancing to music I could not hear.

 

 Last fall there were a lot of winter fireflies that would hang out on that tree trunk for days at a time. Today I found one there.

 I tried looking up what kind of moth this was, but there are a surprising number of moths that look kind of like this, and yet I didn't find any (I was looking in my caterpillar guide, which shows what the caterpillars are going to turn into) that look exactly like this.

 Tree cricket who will soon be laying some eggs.

 Earwig

Arachnid Appreciation:
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These first two were on the popular tree trunk of the day:

 

 Micrathena

 

 It drizzled on and off all day yesterday, and was humid today, so a lot of the spider webs were covered with water droplets again.