Seeing and Hearing

 I had a conversation with my niece yesterday about cicadas, and I referred to them as the one bug that everyone has heard, but not seen. That's obviously not really true, particularly in places that have 17 year cicadas in populous areas. There could be another candidate for most common bug, or rather, order of bugs, that people have seen but not heard, and that is katydid. I knew so little about bugs before I started studying the bugs in my backyard that I had been hearing katydids for decades and didn't even know what one was. If anyone had asked me about the bug noises I heard at night, I would not have been able to tell you that I was hearing katydids. I might have said that I was hearing frogs; I don't know, and I am not sure I ever even wondered about it. And then I heard about katydids long before I ever saw one. I think the first one I ever saw was actually in my house. It was tiny, and unbelievably loud, and extremely difficult to find and then capture and remove. And probably any katydids that I saw early on in my insect education I would have assumed were grasshoppers. They do look similar, and are in the same order, and if you have no idea what a katydid is, or maybe even that they exist, grasshopper seems like a logical guess if you found one. Right now I am sitting next to an open window listening to katydids. When I was out on the back porch earlier I could distinguish at least two species calling in the night. I can hear at least two species of crickets right now, too, a ground cricket and tree crickets. So prevalent a sound in the summer, and yet many people have probably never seen the insects that are creating this racket. Because I am looking for insects, I see katydids rather frequently now, starting with the nymphs when they are quite small, but I probably walk right past hundreds, if not thousands of them every summer without seeing them–they blend in really well with foliage (and I think a lot of them are up in the trees). I know a lot of other people are walking right past them without seeing them, too.

I saw one today, and it is today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

I think this is a greater angle wing katydid, but I am not sure fork-tailed bush katydid.

If you've never seen a katydid in person, this is a pretty big insect, about three inches long or so. Not all species of katydids are this big, but they do all have extremely long antennae.

 

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

Wood frog. I am guessing it made a leap and got caught in the garden fence. Wood frogs are impressive leapers. I didn't really know if it needed help; it looks uncomfortable, but it didn't struggle or appear in distress. I helped it out, though, and it seemed fine. It just sat there while I watched it, and when I went back to picking cucamelons that grow on the garden fence, it must have hopped away. It was not there when I checked again after a few minutes.

Other Bugs:

 While we're on the subject of Orthoptera, here's a cricket, which is also in that Order with katydids and grasshoppers.

The fall webworms are growing... Here you can see something interesting. You can't really tell, but they are underneath a layer of webbing, which they build as a group, and they aren't eating the entire leaf, they are just scraping off the top layers, leaving the lower membrane (or whatever that's called). All those dark colored bits are frass.

I took this picture later, after it had rained for a few minutes, which is why the frass looks diffierent; it has soaked up rain water. But that's not why I posted this picture–in this shot you can really see a difference in different instars. Some of the caterpillars are much smaller than the others, because it took a couple of days for the eggs to all hatch, so some have a head start on others. They really can grow quite a bit from day to day.

The coloring of the jagged ambush bug makes for pretty effective camouflage:

Tachinid fly

 Another species of tachinid fly. Also, harder to see, two bees and another fly on this plant, which is either the native plant virgin's bower or an invasive plant, sweet autumn clematis. It's new to my backyard, and quite popular with pollinators, so I looked it up, and tomorrow I will get a better look at the leaves to determine if it is a friend or foe.

 

Milkweed tussock moth caterpillar

 Arachnid Appreciation:

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I first spotted this spider (well, its shadow) on this same leaf a couple of days ago. Today it was on the other side of the leaf. It was much hotter today, and I wonder if it didn't like baking in the sun.

Finally, a spined micrathena spider that built its web somewhere other than right across one of my paths! And it's quite a web; the "orb" area is well over a foot across, and the anchor threads are probably five or six:

Jumping spider: