A strange thing happened yesterday–it rained all day. That almost never happens. There is usually a break in the rain at some point, or it rains in the morning and stops by afternoon, but yesterday it started in the morning and went into the night. We only got about three quarters of an inch from it, but it was refreshing. I mention this because it is the reason there was no blog post yesterday. I realize I should have taken the opportunity to do one of the posts from a day I missed when the site wasn't working, but I didn't.
Today was a lovely day, about twenty degrees cooler than it was this time last week, and clear, blue sky. I am sure if I had done my bug walk at an earlier time I would have found a lot of bugs, but as it is, I had other things to do and didn't get to it until early evening. I did, however, go out with my camera briefly in the morning (or maybe it was early afternoon by then, I don't have a very good sense of time anymore), and found a few nice bugs then. And now that I come to think of it, my bug walk was done in two stages so... basically today I wandered around my backyard at random times and found bugs.
Sorry, none of that was interesting or informative. I need to improve my game. Anyway, Backyard Bug of the Day:
Weevil on goldenrod
Other Bugs:
Dragonfly
Grasshopper nymph
Jagged ambush bug nymph:
Bumblebee on purple coneflower
I think this is a species of sweat bee, on purple coneflower.
Cool eye
Now that the flowers are gone, insects are scarce on the milkweed patch, but there are still caterpillars. Not monarchs, but other:
Milkweed tussock moth caterpillar
The fall webworms have mostly moved to the next instar. They were very active today. They have built their web, and there were some inside it feeding on the leaf, and others walking around on the outside:
Arachnid Appreciation:
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Goldenrod crab spider with fly prey. If you look carefully you can see that underneath the spider and its prey is a jagged ambush bug nymph.
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