Looking Twice

 Today's lesson is that it pays to give something a second look. I saw something small on a leaf, and wasn't sure it was a bug, and almost walked away from it, but I decided to look at it more closely, and now it is Backyard Bug of the Day:

Less than a quarter inch long, this moth is pretty vivid when you look at it with the light in the right way, but from another view it looked like a piece of a dried up leaf. And yet, some of its wing scales are metallic, and quite sparkly when the sunlight hit them just right.

The Japanese knotweed has mostly finished blooming, and now the bugs have forsaken it and returned to the autumn joy sedum. It has lately been pretty popular with butterflies; though butterflies have generally been scarce in my backyard this year, in the last few weeks I have seen 5 or 6 different species of butterflies on these flowers. Sometimes they have spent quite a long time feeding there, sticking around for the hour or so that I spend on my bug walk, or flying away and coming back a few minutes later (assuming it is the same butterflies, and not coincidentally the same species). I haven't been able to get pictures of all of them. Last week I got some pictures of a red admiral, and today there was another red admiral there, and it was much more disposed to pose for me:

The butterfly was not the only Lepidoptera on the autumn joy sedum:

Mostly, though, there were honeybees:

 

Dragonfly

 Ailanthus webworm moth on goldenrod:

Three instars of large milkweed bugs

Most unusually, I saw two frogs in the backyard today. It's not unusual for me to see up to a dozen frogs on one of my woods walks, of a variety of species, but it's not at all the thing for me to see two in the regular backyard, and two different species, too. Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

I think this might be a spring peeper. Nice cryptic adaptation.

Wood frog. Very uncooperative.

I witnessed more spider drama for Arachnid Appreciation:.

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I watched this scene for a few minutes, wondering what would happen if the fly moved closer to the spider:

Well, it did. And what happened is that the spider ran at the fly, and the fly flew away.

 

Then the spider went back to its resting spot.

Flower crab spider on goldenrod