Uncooperative

I've got a lot of pictures to load today, and that's going to take forever, so I think I'll just skip my diatribe against butterflies that I was planning to write... no, I'm going to go ahead and rage against the Lepidopterans. Butterflies are beautiful and charming, I think most people agree, but if you're like me, and you just want to take a picture of one, then eventually you kind of start hating them. I've seen a lot of butterflies lately, but how many have you seen here on this blog this year, two or three? Maybe four? Because butterflies are extremely uncooperative! They just will not sit still for a picture! They pretend they are going to–they land right next to me all the time, but just as I get the camera trained on them, off they flit! It's like they are deliberately teasing me! Today an eastern tiger swallowtail suddenly appeared as I was trying to take a picture of a different bug, flew around my head, and then fluttered off into the treetops! And it's not the only butterfly that did that to me today! It's maddening! Do you know how many butterflies I saw today? No? Neither do I, because I saw enough that I lost count (at least 5 species, I would guess). And how many pictures did I take of butterflies today? Not a single one. Not even a bad one. Not one single photo of a butterfly. And the rest of the Lepidopterans aren't much better. There must have been at least 20 moths today that played this stupid game with me. I hate this game. I hate butterflies. They taunt me, and I hate them.
Okay, no, I don't hate butterflies. I think they're marvelous. I plant things in my backyard just so please them, and not because I think it will get me good photos (HA!), but because I like them and want them to thrive. I have allowed the milkweed to take over a part of the small area of my backyard that was designated to be a lawn, just so the butterflies in general will have food, and the monarchs will have their host plant to lay their eggs. I get no gratitude from the butterflies for this, feckless pack of ingrates. But... sigh... I love butterflies.

Backyard Mammal of the Day:

Raccoons are not, as often reported, strictly nocturnal.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Fish fly. I went for a long bug walk today, lingering outside with my camera for a couple of hours, and the Backyard Bug of the Day is a bug that was on the porch when we got home after going out in the evening.

Other Bugs:

 Tent caterpillar. I can't remember if this is an eastern or a forest tent caterpillar. I'll look it up later if I have the time.

 Leaf hoppers

 I have been on the lookout for this. I usually start seeing them around the time the clematis blooms, and the clematis is blooming. This is a katydid nymph. It did not want to have its picture taken. One great thing about insect nymphs is that they don't have wings, so they can't fly away when you try to take their picture. But some of them, katydids in particular, can hop.

 Another species of katydid nymph. I have seen three, I think, in the last two days, possibly four, because I saw another one today, but I wasn't able to see it close enough to know for sure.

 A better picture of the one above.

 Flower longhorn beetle

 Bumblebee

 Looper caterpillar

I found these eggs:

 

 I don't know what they are, but they look like snowberry clearwing moth eggs, which is interesting because I have not seen any snowberry clearwing moths this year. But I am not outside all of the time, I probably miss a million bugs every day. They are gorgeous eggs, like tiny pearls.

I spotted this:

 Discarded exoskeleton from an insect molt...

 ... possibly from this assassin bug on the leaf below?

There are a lot of sawfly larvae in the backyard at the moment–I saw 5 species today:

 I saw two tortoise beetles today. This year I have seen more of them than I ever have before.

 Looper caterpillar pretending to be a twig

 Cranefly

 The only Lepidopteran that cooperated with me on my bug walk

 Stilt-legged bug

 Two wasps on a fern with some eggs. These look like different species of wasps, but it's kind of hard to say that for sure, because maybe they are the same species, but very sexually dimorphic? I think not. The questions, then, are whose eggs are these? and are those wasps doing something nefarious to them, like eating them or laying their own eggs in them, thereby parasitizing the insect inside?

Closer look

And on the subject of meddling with other species' eggs, there's an ant in the leftovers of the egg mass from the white marked tussock moths.

Other Bugs From the Porches Tonight:

 Caddisfly

 A small selection of moths

I have never seen this moth before, so I have decided that it is now Backyard Co-Bug of the Day, #2:

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Usually if I happen to get a picture of a brown lacewing I make it Backyard bug of the Day. However, since this jumping spider found it first...

I found this interesting scene:

 At first I thought this was two spiders, or a spider and its prey, but when I came close with the camera...

 ... the spider scurried up on top of the leaf, and I saw that what was left behind was an exoskeleton, most likely belonging to the spider.

 Then when I took this shot I thought at first that it was missing a back leg on the left, but then I realized it is there, but small and pale, and it occurred to me that maybe the spider just molted, and that leg hasn't quite filled out yet.