Lawless

I have mentioned many times my Law of Nature that if there is something to eat, there will be something to eat it. Lately, though, that law has not been playing out as it should in my backyard. I have this patch of flowers:

 These are called dame's rocket. Usually they are attractive to bees, hover flies, butterflies, and a variety of other insects, but most days this year I can't find any insects on them at all. It's a pretty big patch of flowers, too, so there should be a lot of insects here.

 So there I was, standing in my backyard, contemplating the fact that my Law of Nature is being challenged by this patch of flowers, when suddenly...

 THIS appeared.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 This is a Nessus sphinx moth. It looks like a cross between a huge bee and a hummingbird. I think I caught a glimpse of one yesterday as it zoomed past me right in front of my face, and then I did get a quick look at one earlier in my bug walk, where it investigated some irises but did not feed from them.

 This is a new species for me. I think it is also considered a hummingbird moth, but that term is a little fuzzy. When I first spotted it, I assume it was a snowberry clearwing hummingbird moth, but the markings are different, and in the pictures it is really obvious that it does not have the clear wings of a clearwing moth.

 It fed pretty much all over the patch of flowers, so you can now feast your eyes on a plethora of pictures of this charming insect.

This made my day. Interesting, too, that twice this week I have had sphinx moths in my backyard, two different species. I rarely see sphinx moths. And one moth doesn't change the fact that this patch of blooms should be host to many bugs.

Speaking of which, I checked up on this egg, which I think might be a snowberry clearwing hummingbird moth (another sphinx moth). It does not appear to have changed at all.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 Scorpionfly. Female. The males have a tail that loops up like a scorpion's which is where the name comes from. Scorpionflies do not sting.

 I said a few days ago that these get to be BBotD when I get a decent picture, which is why I chose this for Co-Bug today. You never know when you're going to find one that will cooperate again. Today I found two, the one above and this one.

Other Bugs:

 Aphids, adult and nymphs.

And speaking of aphids...

 Several times recently I have posted pictures of ants tending to aphids on a particular sapling. There are several little groups of aphids, each with several ants. The ants want the honeydew that the aphids secrete, and so they protect them from predators, or so I have always read. However, today I saw a syrphid fly larva (hover fly larva) curled around the branch next to the clump of aphids. Syrphid fly larvae eat aphids. I could see it picking them off. And there were ants there...

 But the ants didn't do anything about it! They walked over the syrphid fly larva several times, and basically just ignored it, and what it was doing.

 

 How does that ant not notice this predator that is RIGHT THERE eating the aphids?

 Then I noticed that most of the groups of aphids had a syrphid fly larva among them.

 

 These are creepy insects. The adult syrphid flies are so dainty and pretty, but the larvae are the stuff of nightmares. I first saw them a few years ago, and it took me ages to even figure out which end is the head.

 That's a lot of aphids...

Here's a syrphid fly. I assume it is a different species, because those larvae are way bigger than this bug, although that does sometimes seem to be the case with larvae/imagos.

 Another species of hoverfly/syrphid fly

 I saw several katydid nymphs today, too.

Katydid nymph

Another katydid nymph

 Moth

 Brown marmorated stinkbugs

 For some reason there were a bunch of sawfly larvae on the top of the rain gauge. I think they may have fallen out of the tree next to the rain gauge.

 I have been trying for days to get a picture of one of these damselflies. They are quite small and delicate.

 White marked tussock moth caterpillar. It has been a few days since I have been able to find one of these. I don't know if it's from the same group that hatched on the arbor, but if it is, it has grown and developed quite a bit.

 I have been looking out at night, hoping to see fireflies blinking in the darkness, but so far I have only been able to find them during the day, like this one. But tonight when I went out for sky time I was finally able to spot fireflies flitting about in the treetops. Standing there, watching those ethereal lights, and listening to the crickets, really felt like summer. Not that it didn't feel like summer this afternoon when it was almost 90ºF, but there are different aspects of summer. 90ºF weather is not a good one, but fireflies most certainly are.

 Caterpillar

 Leaf with caterpillar eating from above, and a solitary sawfly larva eating from below.

 There is another kind of flower that is very abundant in my backyard right now that is strangely unattractive to bugs. It usually hosts many species, mostly beetles, but other kinds of bugs, too, but lately I have hardly been able to find any bugs on them. So I took this picture in order to illustrate that there were no bugs on the plant, when a beetle crawled up from below the flowers:

 I then noticed when I looked on the computer that there are two more bugs in this picture. Can you see them?

 They are more visible in this shot, along with another bug that I did notice at the time.

 

 This one's a little closer, can you see them now?

 Some kind of Hemiptera nymph

 Geometer moth of some kind

 Ladybeetle

 I forget what kind of wasp this is...

Honeysuckle borer

Colorado potato beetle

Arachnid Appreciation:

 

 This jumping spider was doing an amusing rappelling activity.

 It would drop down from the leaf on a thread, hang there for about a second, and the scurry back up to the leaf, only to do the whole thing over, and over, and over...

Daddy-long-legs/harvestman