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Not Again...

It's a shame that I am unable to blog now, because I have seen some interesting things, and learned a lot from what I have seen, and I am unable to share with you because the photo uploader on this site isn't working. This is another placeholder post, where hopefully I will be able to eventually show the things I have seen.

Imperfect Memory

Today was a more fun and interesting bug walk than I have had lately. If this site ever gets its picture uploader fixed I will be happy to show you what I saw. Until then, this is just a placeholder post. I am now completing this post on August 13, 2020. The difficulty with this delay in writing is that I don't remember what was particularly fun or interesting about that day's bug walk almost a month ago. It's a shame, really, that I have been unable to post for so long, because I have had some really fun and interesting bug walks, and seen some cool things, and now I don't remember the details. Particularly because in some cases I saw interesting things and was not able to get pictures, but if I had been able to post on the days I saw them, I could have at least told about them. Though, now that I think of it, I could have just done text posts on those days. Drat. I wish I had thought of that. On some days I did consider jotting down some notes, but I am too lazy. Anyway, moving on with what I saw on July 16.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I don't know what this is, and I confess that I did not bother to look it up, but it is not out of laziness. It is obvious from the undeveloped wings that this is a nymph, not an adult insect, and so it won't be in any of my books. They only rarely show nymphs, and I am sure that this will not be in there. It does look like a Hemiptera of some kind, but other than that I have no idea.

Other Bugs:

There were several of these moths around today. My guess is females (from the thin antennae), probably sitting around hoping a male will come by.

 

Once again a great deal of the insect activity in the backyard was centered around the milkweed patch. There were the two monarch caterpillars:

Katydid nymph

Bumblebees, of course

And where there are bugs to eat, there will be other bugs to eat them, like this assassin but lurking among the flowers:

Red milkweed beetle

At first glance this probably looks like a hopper nymph and a hopper, but notice the white object on the upper left has legs; it is another hopper nymph. It could be the nymph form of the gray hopper, but I don't know for sure:

I found this curious thing on a leaf of what I think is a black cherry tree:

It was moving, and I realized...

... that inside it was a caterpillar that was cutting sections out of the leaf and attaching it to its "house."

Fall webworm caterpillar

Cricket

Milkweed tussock moth caterpillars:

Lady beetle. I think it's a twenty-spot lady beetle

Thick-headed fly

I am not sure what kind of moth this is; I was going to say Virginia Ctenucha, but I don't think that's right. It is obviously trying to look like a wasp.

Another species of thick-headed fly

Once again I found multiple instars of lacebugs on a leaf, but there are more than just the two that are obvious here, an adult and later instar nymphs:

There are some early instar nymphs, too. I did not see them when I took the picture, and only noticed them when I looked at it on the computer.

There is a story behind this picture, but I don't remember what it was (the sad effect of having to wait almost a month to post about it), other than that my husband was up on the roof working and dropped this tape measure, and I put it on the back porch for him. That is his shoe in the upper right of the picture:

It's a pearl crescent butterfly.

I didn't bother to look this up. There are several caterpillars that look like this, and I am not in the mood to figure out the intricacies of its markings.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Orchard spider with prey

I did not notice the spider when I took this picture. Do you see it?

Technical Difficulties [Resolved. More or Less]

 Today is August 12, and I was finally able to finish this post from a few weeks ago. I am not happy with the new interface of the blog, and it might drive me nuts trying to catch up on my posts, but we'll see what happens. Anyway, here is the finished post. The only part I actually wrote on July 15 was the next sentence.

I don't really have an intro tonight.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1: Grasshopper nymph. I think this is a new species of grasshopper for me:

 

I saw this on my woods walk, so the pictures were taken with my phone.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

A pair of thick-headed flies. The female is to the right, slightly larger, with the long ovipositor.

Other Bugs:

Also seen on my woods walk: milkweed tussock moth caterpillars on the small milkweed patch in the woods.

ALSO seen on my woods walk: I think these two dragonflies might be male and female of the same species:

Bumblebee on lavender

 

One of my favorite things about this species of katydid nymphs is that I so often find them on bright flowers.

I think this is two instars of the same species of leaf hopper. To the left, that white blur I think is the exuvia that the adult hopper has recently emerged from.

Dangly caterpillar, climbing up a silk thread:

A couple of different instars of a leaf hopper nymph.

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Orchard spider on pokeweed buds.

Stages

Back on the subject of hearing insects in the summer, today I heard the first cicada of the year. I rarely see cicadas, but I hear them every year. They make an unlovely sound, but hearing it makes it feel like summer.
Backyard Bug of the Day:

This amazing little moth is only about half an inch long, if that. You can see that it is on the window screen of my house–my husband gets the credit for spotting this one this afternoon. I came home from an appointment and he said he had something to show me, and this was it. It spent several hours in that spot.

This was not in my book, so I don't know what kind of moth it is. It is a new one for me. Edit: A friend saw my pictures of this moth and knew it was a smaller parasa moth. I have seen smaller parasa caterpillars in my yard before (not this year, though), so now I have seen both stages for this Lepidoptera.

Other Bugs:

The Backyard Bug of the Day was to one side of the back door, and this little moth was to the other. This one is even smaller.

Here's something I enjoy highlighting when I get the chance–three stages of the life cycle of an insect, all in one day. I give you Twenty Spotted Lady Beetle, Larva, to Pupa, to Imago:

Larva

Pupa:

Imago, or adult. I found all of these on the same dogwood tree, where obviously at some point a lot of lady beetle eggs were laid, and those eggs hatched, and the larvae that emerged have gone through their life cycle on the leaves of the tree. (Strange to note that I have not seen any aphids on the tree, which are the primary food source of lady beetle larvae). For a while I was seeing a lot of larvae, and now there are not so many, but the presence of pupae and imagos explains why. Given what some of the imagos have been up to there are probably more eggs on the tree somewhere, but I was not able to find them. I would also like to note that this is a really small species of lady beetle. Not what you're used to in the bright red "ladybugs" everyone knows and recognizes.

I also found this on one of the leaves, and at first I thought that it might be a recently hatched twenty spotted lady beetle larva, because it has the coloring, but that is not what recently hatched lady beetle larvae look like. I know this, because I have watched them hatch before. They look like small versions of of, well, lady beetle larvae. I think this might actually be the larva of some kind of fly, because I saw a picture of a fly larva recently that looked like this:

Hemiptera nymph

Fly

The chrysalis straightened out today.

 Planthopper nymph

Weevil

Tiny fly

I have a rule, which I believe I have mentioned, that if I get a good picture of a tumbling flower beetle it gets to be Backyard Bug of the Day for that day. This is not that day. It is, however, a tumbling flower beetle. Or possibly a wedge beetle; I get those confused. The same rule applies, however.

Robber fly, female. That's not a stinger.

A couple of katydid nymphs resting in flowers:

Hopper nymph on the leaf with all the tiny wasp chrysalides. Notice the holes in the chrysalides, where the wasps crawled out.

No idea, but I would venture a guess that there is an insect in some stage of development inside that structure. About an inch long, possibly less.

Ants drinking from a drop of something on a leaf.

Between the ants above, and these thorn mimic planthoppers, it's like the insects suddenly decided to pose for the camera:

Here is an exuvia from one of the thorn mimic planthoppers. There were several other of them (the insects, not the exuviae) on this plant.

I don't know what this is, but it could be an egg sac or a pupal case.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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I got a package today. The spiders that live in the package bin (there's more than one now) were not happy.