Herbal Attractors

There's a lot of information swirling around my head about today's Backyard Bug of the Day. This week in the online class I am taking about bugs the lesson has talked about insect diets, and about how some insects are very restricted in their diets (like monarch caterpillars only eating milkweed), and others are very generalist, and in between are some that will eat a variety of plants that are from the same family. Now, I don't know a lot about plant families, I only know things like there are a lot of species of oak trees, and tomatoes and eggplants are related because they are both nightshades. Lately I have seen pictures, and heard from friends, about caterpillars eating herbs in gardens, and specifically black swallowtail caterpillars eating dill and parsley. I don't know if dill and parsley are related, but I have never seen black swallowtail caterpillars, so I thought maybe I should plant dill and parsley just to attract black swallowtails to lay eggs on them. And then I wondered if that would be weird, to plant herbs not for my own use, but to attract insects to destroy them. Maybe it would be, but that is not a reason not to do it. Anyway, I haven't planted any of that yet, but after learning about insects eating plants from the same family I did wonder if dill and parsley are related (and if you're wondering if I am about to tell you, I am not. I didn't look it up). Then a couple of days ago I saw a picture of a black swallowtail caterpillar feeding on a queen anne's lace plant. So naturally I began to wonder if queen anne's lace is related to dill and parsley. And since another name for queen anne's lace is wild carrot, I began to wonder if carrots are related to dill and parsley.

I am allergic to Queen Anne's lace. I usually have my husband pull up any and all Queen Anne's lace in the yard before it blooms so I don't have to deal with the allergen. But knowing that they can attract black swallowtail butterflies to lay eggs, so I can see black swallowtail caterpillars, I thought that maybe I should leave them alone this year. After all, I have been going for allergy shots for a year, and even though I am not getting shots for Queen Anne's lace, the nurses tell me that it still might help with those allergens just because it is reducing my overall allergy load (that is a terrible explanation, sorry). Maybe the reason I have never seen a black swallowtail caterpillar before is because I have been getting rid of all the Queen Anne's lace in my backyard. Or parsley, or dill. The only herb I ever plant is basil.

As I have mentioned before, we recently bought a big parcel of land next to our home property. Most of the new property is woods, and most of it right now is pretty inaccessible due to overgrowth of invasive plants, but part of the property is on the cul-de-sac at the end of our street. So almost all the way around the cul-de-sac is now my backyard. And at the edge of the street there are Queen Anne's lace plants that have not been pulled up, because that has not been my property long enough for me to do that (same with ragweed, my enemy. But I HAVE had shots for that, so maybe it won't bother me). So today, on my bug walk, I examined the few queen anne's lace in my yard (since my husband didn't get around to pulling them up before they bloomed this year), and saw nothing of interest, but the ones on the cul-de-sac...

Backyard Bugs of the Day:

 Black swallowtail caterpillar

 Only one of the plants had the caterpillars on it, and there were a lot of them.

 One interesting thing about swallowtail caterpillars is that they look very different in different instars. You can see that there are different instars on the plant, because the coloring is very different. I hope that at least some of these will stick around until the later instars, because they will look completely different then.

Other Bugs:

 Male monarch butterfly

 Katydid nymph

The one kind of insect that I still see in great numbers on the black-eyed Susans is looper caterpillars:

 This insect egg looks like it is going to hatch soon. It has turned dark...

 ... and the larva/nymph inside is kind of visible.

 Looper caterpillar on Queen Anne's lace

 Stilt-legged bug

 I learned a new word recently: exuvia. It is the discarded exoskeleton of an arthropod after it molts. This is a cicada exuvia on the side of a tree. It's kind of fascinating that the exuvia just continues to hold on after the insect leaves.

 So many insect eggs in the backyard lately... Top of the leaf...

 ... and bottom of the leaf, where some of the sawfly larvae have hatched.

 I thought these were sawfly larvae when I saw them a few days ago, but now I think they might be caterpillars. They are not welcome on my blueberries, but I have not knocked them off. [Edit: I looked it up. It appears to be a Drexel's Datana caterpillar].

 Beetle

 Leaf-footed bug nymph

 Leaf-footed bug adult

 Assassin bug nymph

 A couple of different species of hoppers

 Milkweed tussock moth caterpillars Brood 3

 MTMC Brood 4

The ants are still diligently guarding these nymphs, so I still can't get a good picture of them:

 I was careful not to touch the plant, but I obviously leaned to close with my camera and ended up with an ant crawling around the edge of the ring flash.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Backyard Reptile of the Day:
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This one casually but swiftly slithered away when I came close to it, and since the movement was the only reason I knew it was there, this is the best picture I got of it. After I took it, when I tried to get a better angle, it disappeared down a hole in the ground.