What's In A Name

There have been interesting changes in the cricket orchestra in the last few days as the temperature has gone up and down. I can break it down like this: when it's warm, there are a lot of crickets and katydids still calling. When it's cold... it's quiet. Last night the air was alive with cricket song. Tonight when I took the garbage out I could hear one katydid, and far off in the distance a couple of crickets. We'll be having our first frost soon. I would expect that night to be silent. But even today during the day the singing was subdued, particularly compared to yesterday which was at least ten degrees warmer.

You can probably guess that my backyard was not teeming with insects today. The one that I saw in abundance was a little ironic. Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Winter firefly. Which is active to a certain degree more or less year round, so seeing them doesn't mean that winter is here, even if the temperature was below normal. But today they were all over the backyard, crawling around on tree trunks.

 This particular one has been hanging out within the same few square inches of this tree trunk for the last week or so, possibly more. It hides in crevices of the bark, but not very well, and not always the same crevice.

The one area of the backyard that was really alive with insect life was the rock garden–at least at the start of my bug walk. When I first went outside the rock garden was in full sun, and there were lots of bugs to be seen. Not easy to photograph, but just standing there and looking around I could see the movement of the insects that were there. By the time I was done with my tour of the backyard and stopped to look at the rock garden again it was in full shade, the sun having gone behind the trees (which are still pretty fully leafed), and the rock garden had gone still. But while it was sunny:

 Grasshoppers are still hopping (and now flying) around the rock garden and basking in the sunshine on the rocks, the plants, and the side of the house.

 A couple of cocoons

 There were a lot of flies, of different species. And you can just barely see an ant here.

Wasp

 Not sure if this is a sawfly or another wasp.

 Sawfly larva on the side of the house.

I didn't see any crickets in the rock garden today (or anywhere else, for that matter), but I could hear that they were there.

Elsewhere in the backyard the bugs were harder to find, but there were a few:

 Fall webworm caterpillar

 Crane fly. It is missing 2 legs on its right side.

 I have found a lot more striped garden caterpillars this year than ever before. This one has a parasite on it.

 Crane fly

Case bearing caterpillar on autumn joy sedum

Bees were scarce today. This sweat bee was the only one I saw other than a dead bumblebee on my back porch.

I only found one spider today for Arachnid Appreciation:
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