Charming

An entire day without rain! HUZZAH! It was too hot, though. Just kidding. Trying to be funny, complaining about the weather even when it does what I wanted it to do. Except it really was hot today. I had hoped that this would lead to there being a lot of bugs out, and that wasn't really the case, except for one particular order, Lepidoptera–specifically butterflies. I am always happy to have a lot of butterflies around, though it would be nice if they would cooperate more. There is a line from the movie Thoroughly Modern Millie in which Millie refers to a gentleman who is charming but somewhat unreliable as a butterfly boy. It seems an accurate metaphor. However, I should stop complaining and just show you what I did manage to get.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Monarch butterfly egg. I check for these on the milkweed plants occasionally, but I can't check every leaf, it's sort of random. Today I finally found one. I thought it had just been laid because...

... there was a monarch butterfly in the milkweed patch.

But this butterfly did not lay any eggs...

... because it is a male. Note the spot on the hindwing, which indicates that it is male. Female monarchs do not have that spot.

As I said, there were other butterflies today, skippers in the milkweed patch again, a cabbage white, a swallowtail I saw on my woods walk, and:

Eastern tiger swallowtail. This is the most cooperative eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly I have encountered in two years. That should tell you something about all the others I have seen.

Then on my woods walk, I spotted a couple of Great Spangled Fritillaries:

Their encounter was not very congenial.

And there were small wood satyrs everywhere today. I have never seen them so abundant as this year.

The milkweed remains popular with bees:

 

But they like other flowers, too. This one is on a black-eyed Susan.

Weevil

Lady beetle

Two different leaf hopper nymphs

Buffalo tree hopper nymph

Robber fly

I don't know what kind of fly this is, but it's pretty big.

I realize this is a terrible picture of a robber fly, which is what I was trying to photograph, but looking at it later I noticed the assassin bug peeking out on the lower left, which I found amusing, so here it is.

Scorpion fly, female

Arachnid Appreciation:
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The scorpion fly was not alone. If you look closely in the other picture you can see the leg of the harvestman in the upper right of this picture, right next to her.

I know this is a terrible picture, but this itsy bitsy jumping spiderling was just adorable. It was already a good jumper. It looks like it hasn't developed its full coloring yet.