Habitat Rehabilitation

Part of the new property we bought was a fairly open field twenty years ago when we bought the land for our house, but now the field is overrun by invasive plants: multiflora rose, grapevine, autumn olive, and bittersweet. It's a big, tangled mess that it is impossible to walk through. We plan to keep the land natural, we're not going to build on it, but we do want to restore a native habitat, so all of those invasive plants have to go. It is an overwhelming prospect. I've worked on it for a little while most days since the closing, after doing my bug walk. The first day I found a caterpillar on one of the plants, but I'm not really seeing a lot of bugs, nor am I expecting to. I am deep in the thorn thicket at this point. But today while I was working there was an insect that hung around for a while, sunning itself on leaves, coming and going (no doubt hunting for prey). I had not brought my camera out with me to work, because it wasn't a convenient place to have it, and like I said, I wasn't expecting to find bugs there. It was worth it to walk back to the house to get the camera to take a picture of this beauty.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Ebony jewelwing damselfly, female.

Other Bugs:

 This bee was kind of clumsy.

 I have noticed sometimes that bees often feed from flowers that are a scale that matches their size. Not quite the case with this one...

 

 This jagged ambush bug took up residence on this flower about a week ago. I feel bad for it, because there haven't been anywhere near as many bugs on the black-eyed Susans in that time. I do admire the tenacity of ambush bugs in committing to a location.

 This one must have just hatched. It has eaten its egg, but not had a chance to make a hole in the leaf yet.

 Wasp on goldenrod

 Assassin bug nymph on goldenrod

 Stinkbug nymph

 Tree cricket

 These blend in so well. How long did it take for you to notice there are two bugs in this picture, not one?

 

During their nymph stages these two species hung around on vines together a lot, and now they are still hanging around on vines together.

 The ants still did not want me to take a picture of these nymphs. I only got two shots off.

 This is the first swallowtail butterfly I have been able to get a picture of this year.

 Dragonfly

 

 I spotted a long line of ants running down the trunk of a tree, so I had to check out what they were doing.

 They weren't just walking down the tree, they were running. And I noticed that a lot of them were carrying white things. I think they had raided another ant nest and were carrying away their rivals' larvae (eggs? pupae?), bringing them back to their own formicary to enslave them to do the work of the colony.

 Either comma or question mark butterfly. Not at all cooperative.

 In fact, in general the Lepidoptera were uncooperative today.

 I guess this would be Brood #4 of the milkweed tussock moth caterpillars.

 That bit of yellow fuzz is a caterpillar climbing up this tree. It is going to be very disappointed when it gets up there and discovers there is nothing to eat because this tree has been dead for over ten years and so has no leaves.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Can you see the spider?