Mysterious Nature

Oof, I really should have gotten an earlier start on this tonight. I took a lot of pictures today–about 300 more than yesterday. It has been a long time since I have given up trying to figure out bugs, specifically what it is that brings them out. Why did I find so few of them yesterday, and so many of them today? The only difference in the weather is that it was cloudy for a while today, and possibly rained a tiny bit. The overnights were both cold, and the daytime highs were separated by only a few degrees. So why was one day full of bugs of a variety of orders, and the other significantly fewer bugs found agreeable? Like I said, I have given up trying to figure it out. I just go out every day and look to find whatever I can.

I am breaking the rules again today with my choice for Backyard Bug of the Day:

 The rule I am breaking is that I have to have a good picture of a bug for it to be chosen as Backyard Bug of the Day. That is clearly not the case here. But I wanted to choose this grasshopper, even though it was so terribly uncooperative, because it might be a new species for me.

 I guess this helps a little bit...

Other Bugs:

 Honeybee. It was sitting on this flower in a bit of a stupor, wet and a bit bedraggled. I didn't see it, but apparently it rained a little bit this morning.

 Ant

 Hover fly

 Tree cricket

I took this picture for the flower, and didn't noticed the insect in it. I didn't even notice it the first time I looked at it on the computer. It wasn't until the second time that I saw it.

Thrips

There were fewer Orthoptera in the rock garden today, but they were still there:

Cricket

Grasshopper

I have noticed that I still am not seeing certain kinds of bugs on the goldenrod that are usually there. No hairstreak butterflies. No looper caterpillars...

... until I found this one today. Still waiting on the butterflies.

Fall webworm

I found a spot in the backyard with a lot of these flies hanging about:

 

Possibly blowflies?

 

 There are a lot of honeysuckle vines there. And some color and size variety among the flies, which I would guess means different species.

How many flies can you find in this picture?

I found nine.

 These two appeared to be feeding on something on the surface of the leaf.

 I looked up the name of this beetle a couple of weeks ago, and now I have forgotten it. It is much too late at night to look it up again...

Ant with its hopper herd. I guess this is not much of a herd, but there are many more on the other leaves of this plant, and have been for well over a month, with ants attending.

Tree cricket that thinks it is hiding between two milkweed seed pods

Sweat bee

Monarch butterfly. She was a bit of a clumsy flyer, and kept trying to squeeze into awkward gaps between these plants.

Crane fly

Oh, you know what this one is by now.

It's woolly bear caterpillar season. These two have very different markings, so I guess we can't use them for the old folklore of figuring out what kind of winter we are going to have.

 

Bumblebee that managed to escape the assassin underneath

Assassin bug

Honeybee in morning glory

A while after seeing the monarch above, I found another one in another part of the backyard, and then later another one. They might all have been the same one; the last one had a bit missing from its right hindwing, but it was very hard for me to tell if they all had that bit missing:

Second sighting...

... and third sighting:

Female

Ant and fly on a tree trunk

We went out in the evening, and there were a few bugs on the porch when we got home, attracted by the porch light:

Geometer moth

Brown lacewing

Backyard Reptile of the Day:
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Garter snake. As always, I had to look up the difference between garter snakes and ribbon snakes to figure it out.