Overtime

I had an hour available to spend on my bug walk today. It took an hour and a half. I took over 500 pictures, which is hundreds more than I usually take in a day (although several times in the last week I got to over 300). After being annoyed with myself for having 3 Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day yesterday (and several other days in recent weeks), today there are five. The later it gets in the season, the more species of bugs I am finding in my backyard–although I think the overall number of bugs I am seeing is way down from years past.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 Silver-spotted skipper on autumn joy sedum

 Here it is on a milkweed plant, showing the dorsal side of its wings.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 Smaller parasa caterpillar

 This is in the family (I am not sure of that taxonomic term, maybe it's an order?) of slug caterpillars. I think you can see why. It has a normal caterpillar head under there, but you'd be hard-pressed to get a look at it.

 Those prickles sticking out are the tops of stinging spines that come out fully when the caterpillar is alarmed.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:

 This may be a beetle with the lovely name of moon-marked leaf beetle.

 You can see the damage it has done to that leaf.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #4:

 I don't know what this is, although it appears to be some kind of hopper. I think it is a new species for me, which is why it was chosen as one of the many Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day today.

 I was photo-bombed while taking pictures of this–do you see the culprit?

 Better look at the photo-bomber. Some kind of beetle larva. Could, maybe should, probably be a Co-Bug of the Day if there weren't already so many.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #5:

 Red-spotted purple butterfly on autumn joy sedum. It has definitely been through some things. It's still flying, though.

There were a pretty nice variety of Other Bugs:

 Grasshoppers, of course...

 What are this bee and these ants doing on this leaf?

 Feeding on the honeydew that drips down onto it from the aphids on the branch just above it.

 Hopper of some kind

 Scorpion fly, female

 Bumblebee and thread-waisted wasp

 Buffalo leaf hopper

 Conehead katydid

 Fly. This was a possibility for Backyard Bug of the Day, because it might be a new species for me. But I had to stop somewhere.

 This could have been a BBotD today, too. It is a cricket that has just finished its final molt into adulthood, and is eating its exuvia, the skin it just shed.

 I assume that it is so pale because it just emerged, and will be a darker color later.

 The eggs are changing.

 I found this gathering of net-winged beetles. I count six, maybe seven? It's hard to tell, though. I imagine there is a female in there somewhere. Later, when I didn't have my camera, I saw two net-winged beetles flying tandem/piggy-back in the near vicinity of where I saw this.

In general I don't find a lot of slug-like caterpillars, but today I found two, the BBotD above, and this one:

 I think this is a yellow-shouldered slug caterpillar. It was quite tiny, so it must be an early-ish instar.

 Here you get a look at what slug-like caterpillars look like underneath. Notice the normal caterpillar head.

 The prolegs are not quite what you usually see on caterpillars.

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

Arachnid Appreciation:
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I wasn't able to get through the briars to see the other side of this spider, so I can't identify it, other than it is an orb weaver. The web was huge, at least 2 feet across, not counting the anchor threads.

 Funnel web spider using a tube from the bee house for a lair

 I think that is an egg mass of earwigs, with a jumping spider peeking around it.

A damselfly flitted by me while I was on my bug walk, and so I watched to see if it would land, so I could take a picture of it. It landed a couple of times, but when I would move toward it, it would fly again, moving from stem to stem of various plants. Then it landed on one with some commotion, and I thought it must have caught something, and the something did not want to be eaten. I was only partly right...

 A nursery web spider caught the damselfly.

 The damselfly kept flexing its body, trying to defend itself, it looked like, but it couldn't reach the spider.

 I am not sure why the damselfly couldn't escape; the nursery web spiders don't use a web to catch prey (their webs are for raising young), they just grab them, and this one doesn't seem to be holding on very securely...

 Well, now it is.