Greenery

I have seen a pretty large swath of this country, having made two cross-country road trips in the last decade, and many more road trips of less epic proportions, and have reached this entirely unsurprising conclusion: it's not all the same. I mean a lot of things in that statement, and since this is not a travel blog I will not explain them, except to say that the part of the country where I live is very green in the summer, and there are vast areas of the country that are decidedly not. I enjoyed all of my travels a great deal, but when I was away from this luxuriant verdure on those trips, I missed it. I love the greenness of my home state. I was thinking about all of that green today during my bug walk, and the effect it has on the insect life of the area; specifically I was noticing that a huge number of the bugs in my backyard are green.
That's why you can play "Spot the Katydid" and have it be something of a challenge:

 Of course, in this case it's a little easier, because this katydid has been hanging out in the same general area for over a week. But my whole backyard is a tangle of greenery. Doing my bug walk is in part about trying to find things that blend in to all of this.

 It is even covered in patterns that look like the surface of leaves.

 I first saw this conehead katydid two days ago, and I was unable to find it yesterday. Today I found it again in the same area where it was two days ago. I would bet it was there yesterday, too, but I didn't see it, even though I was looking for it. Among all the green that surrounds me, no doubt I am missing a million insects every day because they blend in so well.

 Every once in a while someone will share a picture with me of a green caterpillar and ask me what it is (even though I think it is fairly obvious that insect identification is not something I excel at), and I usually don't know, because there are so many green caterpillars. This one thinks it is passing for the edge of a leaf.

 This one hopes it will be taken for a second stem.

 Trust me, I am making this easy for you to spot these. I had to look closely to be sure that there was even something on this leaf, and not just a lumpy leaf surface. Midge.

 The really clever ones add a little more color, because there are always imperfections they can blend in with.

 But speaking of green caterpillar identifications, I am really proud of myself for this one–I have never seen it before, but I figured out what it was before I looked it up–and, in fact, it was much easier to look up because I figured out what it was. There are, after all, a ridiculous number of green caterpillars in my caterpillar field guide. This is a primrose moth caterpillar. I figured that out because it was on a primrose plant, and I deduced that the primrose is probably the host plant for the caterpillar in addition to being attractive to the moth.

Tree cricket. I had hoped to find one of these yesterday for my parade of Orthoptera pictures, but wasn't able to do so. This one is a juvenile, as you can see from the underdeveloped wings.

Of course, there are other colors in the landscape, and other colors of bugs, but sometimes I think the coloring is meant to make them stand out, like today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Wasp

 I don't think these colors are meant to blend in, though. I think they are meant to stand out, to be a warning: I sting.

And then, there's this:

Weirdly enough, sometimes these blend in with the green really well, too.

Other Bugs:

 Cricket.

 Grasshopper

 This was a riveting scene. The stinkbug has impaled the sawfly larva with its rostrum (the stabbing mouthpart it uses to suck its food)...

... but the sawfly was still alive, and nibbling at the rostrum.

 Cranefly

 Ant with hoppers it is protecting and feeding from

I forgot about the moth that laid eggs on the milkweed last week, until today I remembered to look for the leaf, and found the caterpillars had hatched:

 Cricket

 Stinkbug eggs

 Looper caterpillar

Fly

Aphids tended by ants

Reptile of the Day:
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I almost stepped on this, and it didn't even move. It is either a ribbon snake or a garter snake, but I didn't get a good enough shot of the head for me to identify it.

It was too long for me to get the whole snake in one shot from my vantage point.