Dodging Thunderstorms

My bug walk today took place in a break between storms. The break wasn't long enough to do my full walk–when the thunder started up again, I had to go back inside. We've now had the good, soaking rain we needed. If it didn't rain tomorrow as forecast, I would be okay with that. Or at least, if it could time the rain for a different part of the day, so I wouldn't have to do my bug walk in the evening when it's heading toward darkness? That would be great.
Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Some kind of fly.

It appears to be a female, and if you look carefully, she's ovipositing, laying her eggs in that bit of vegetation caught on the plant stem.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Stinkbug nymph

In spite of the rain, and the lateness of my bug walk, there were still a lot of bees, mostly bumblebees, on the milkweed plants:

There's a long-legged fly in this shot, too, on the same leaf as the bee.

There were several species of bumblebees.

Notice also the plant bug on the bloom at the top of the picture.

There is a raspberry vine growing in a flowerpot at the bottom of the back porch steps, and for the last two days there has been a swarm of sweat bees zooming around that plant. It doesn't have flowers on it, so I don't know why they like it. They rarely land on the leaves like this one.

I think this is called a tarnished plant bug:

Hopper nymphs:

Mosquito

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Feeding on a bee

Bugs At Dusk

We had thunderstorms for most of the afternoon, so I was not able to go out to look for bugs until dusk. It's not the best time to look for bugs. It's a worse time to try to take pictures of them. So, I don't have much to show you today, in contrast to yesterday. There's a lot of thunderstorms in the forecast for the rest of the week, so other days may be like today.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I think this is a tachinid fly.

Other Bugs:

I think this may also be a tachinid fly, but a much smaller species.

The fuzzy, white hopper nymphs I have been seeing all over the backyard are getting bigger and less fuzzy.

Candy striped leaf hopper

Some kind of hopper nymph

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The rain has knocked down most of the milkweed plants, and unfortunately I think most of them will stay knocked over. For this spider, though, who built a web on the leaning plants, it would probably be a good thing for them not to move back to how they were.

My husband found this spider in a bowl when he was making dinner. He thought it was dead, but I could tell otherwise. I moved it outside. It can't have been living in the bowl very long; we use that bowl a lot.

Among the Milkweed

I feel like I have too many themes I could talk about today, and don't know where to begin. Also, I have a lot more pictures than I have had most other days lately, so this could take a while. So maybe I'll just jump right in with a visitor in my house last night.
Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Last night as I was closing up the house to go to bed I saw a light blinking on the floor by the back door. A firefly had crawled under the screen door and was flashing its light. There are a couple of tricky things about taking pictures of fireflies, and two of them are focus and timing. The light of the insect was just enough that you can see a bit of its legs over its light organ.

Eventually I turned on the light to have a look at it, and saw it was lying on its back. I don't know why. I could speculate that it is a female, and that this is a species in which the females sit on the ground and signal to the males, which fly around, and that this posture is meant to make the light more visible, but that would just be a guess. I have no actual knowledge on the subject. However, it would blink forever in vain if it stayed in the house, so I moved it to the back porch.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

I almost walked right on by this one. It blended in really well on this grass head.

Katydid nymph

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:

Some kind of Hemiptera nymph. It looks a bit like its exoskeleton is missing a bit, and I wonder if it is getting ready to molt.

I saw at least seven, and possibly as many as nine species of butterflies today. I didn't get pictures of the flashy ones: eastern tiger swallowtail, another swallowtail, a probable monarch that zoomed right around me and without me being able to get a clear enough look to identify it, and something else that zipped past–butterflies can fly surprisingly fast–so quickly that I couldn't even guess what it might be. Here are the ones I did photograph:

Small wood satyr

Some kind of skipper

Cabbage white

Silver spot skipper

Note the "silver" spot that give it its name. Notice also that most of these were on milkweed flowers. I have two milkweed patches in my backyard, and both were teeming with life. Mostly bees, but quite a lot of skipper butterflies, mostly the small brown one above, but it could have been multiple species for all I know.

A couple of years ago the milkweed flowers in my backyard attracted so many different kinds of insects that on this blog I had a daily feature of the bugs on the milkweed. Today I figure I should revive it for at least one day. In addition to the butterflies above, Today On the Milkweed:

Plume moth. I used to find a lot of these on milkweed, up to a dozen on a single plant, but for some reason for the last couple of years they haven't really been around. Twice in the last week I have found solitary ones, though.

Hoverfly

Lots of bees, of course, mostly bumblebees:

This one has collected quite a bit of pollen in its pollen baskets, which I prefer to call pollen pants.

Honeybee

Fly. This past week was Pollinators Week, which I never managed to observe on the blog, but this is a good chance to point out, at least, that it's not just bees that pollinate plants.

 

 Lady beetle. This one would not have been feeding on the plant itself, but looking for aphids feeding on the plant.

Let's see, what else have I got for today... Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

Other Bugs:

Robber fly

I have seen these slightly odd "inchworms" on the sassafrass trees in front of the house a lot lately, and today I found one on the tulip tree. I finally got around to looking it up, and it is called Tulip-Tree Beauty:

I assume the name refers to its preferred host plant (though it has others, including sassafras, which I had already figured out) and the physical appearance of the moth it will develop into, though I don't think the moth is a beauty. It's not the usual drab brown, it's a patterned white and brown.

Anyway, the caterpillar is strangely proportioned. That, however, made it easy to find in the caterpillar guide, and funnily enough, the book (Caterpillars of Eastern North America by David L. Wagner) describes it as "not likely to be confused with any other in our fauna." How refreshing, considering that so many other caterpillars are hard to distin

Buffalo tree hopper nymphs:

They have a distinctive profile.

Stinkbug nymphs. Still a lot of baby bugs around.

Lady beetle

Beetle. Not sure what kind.

Flies

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