The Bugs in the Backyard: Lazy Saturday

Today was a lovely day to just lounge around in the backyard. At least, that is what this rabbit thought:

I looked out the window this morning to see this rabbit lolling on the grass. It stayed there for quite a long time. Definitely a lazy, June Saturday kind of mood.

As you can see, the rabbit has what I think are fully engorged ticks on its neck. I have noticed this a few times with rabbits.

It washed its face...

... but did not dislodge the ticks. I know that ticks can be dangerous to some animals (and I don't even mean by passing on diseases like Lyme disease), particularly in large numbers, but I wonder if that is damaging to the rabbit.

As soon as I walked out the back door today for my bug walk I saw an orange butterfly zoom past to land on a milkweed plant, and I thought, "Yay! My first monarch of the year!"

But it wasn't a monarch.

It was a question mark butterfly, and it cooperated just enough for me to get a shot good enough to be able to distinguish it from a comma butterfly; they are almost identical. Still no monarchs, which is too bad, because I have a nice patch of milkweed this year.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Urgleptes signatus, a species of flat-faced longhorn beetle.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Eight-spotted forester caterpillar. With most of the caterpillars in my backyard, even if I can figure out what they are (or bother to look them up), I don't actually know the moth it will turn into (because most of them are moths; indeed, the order Lepidoptera has way more moths than butterflies). And very often they are going to turn into some drab, brown moth. It almost seems sometimes like the more spectacular the caterpillar, the more bland the moth. And it's usually kind of tough to identify them, because I'll go to the caterpillar guide and there are 50 caterpillars that look almost the same. So I was excited to find this caterpillar because not only was it a new species for me, but I thought it was pretty distinctive, and would therefore be easy to identify in the book. And I guessed that it was probably a prominent of some kind. Well, it was not a prominent. And when I found it in the book, it was right next to another caterpillar that was almost identical. EXCEPT... there was one helpful, distinguishing feature, and that is the white blob hear its hind end. One of the two had that, this one has that, and so this is an eight-spotted forester, one of the few moths I actually know (although I do get it confused with the grape leaf roller most of the time). I posted a picture of one about a week ago, but it was not a good picture. Anyway, it's cool to find a new caterpillar, AND be able to figure out what it is, AND be familiar with the moth that it will transform into. Win-win-win on this one.

I took over 300 pictures today, which is a lot more pictures than I have been averaging of late, and it makes it seem like I found A LOT of bugs, but it was really more the case that I took a lot of pictures of some bus (and a rabbit). But I did find a decent number of bugs, and once again a lot of them are bugs that I am seeing for the first time this year. So here are all the Other Bugs:

I saw quite a few sweat bees today. They seem particularly fond of daisy flea bane, so when this flower is blooming, they appear.

This was a fun exercise in futility. I don't know what this insect is.

Bumblebee on red clover

Leaf beetle

Carrion beetle. This was the kind that landed on me the other day. This one also rapidly burrowed into the ground when it decided it didn't want its picture taken.