Flutter By

 If you want to do something small but tangible to support the natural world, plant some fall-blooming flowers in your backyard (or your front yard, or in pots on your balcony) to provide food for migrating butterflies. Right now I've got goldenrod blooming in my yard (front, back, side, everywhere), and today I had a delightful visitor:

Monarch butterflies are on their way to Mexico for the winter. This one is is excellent condition, so she must be recently eclosed. She visited a patch of goldenrod to fuel up for the long journey, and stayed around for a couple of hours. During the summer when I see monarchs they stop in the milkweed patch for short stays, either feeding from flowers or laying eggs, and are gone in no time. This butterfly took advantage of the food source to eat her fill, flying from plant to plant and feeding quite determinedly. Even when I might briefly frighten her away by walking by, she would come back for more goldenrod nectar. She got energy for her journey, and I got the pleasure of watching her.

I don't have a Backyard Bug of the Day today, because nothing qualifies.

But as for other visitors, today in my mailbox I got two magazines, three solicitations from charities, a credit card offer from a bank, and three stinkbugs:

While monarch butterflies are flying south toward warmer climes, this is the time when stinkbugs (brown marmorated stinkbugs, anyway), start looking for shelter. Often they end up in houses. I have never been able to figure out how bugs get into the mailbox. Two of them were gone by the time I went out for my bug walk, but this one remained.

Stinkbug

I found yet another bee on one of the thistle blossoms that has gone to seed. I still have no idea what they are getting from there. There are several flowers on the plant that are still blooming or about to bloom, so why go for the ones that are finished?

The thistle plant was pretty crowded today. Can you find all four of the insects on this leaf?

It could be tricky, since only one of them is fully in focus. There's a leaf hopper and two ants (and I didn't get better pictures of them, so you'll just have to find them in this shot), in addition to the extremely obvious lady beetle.

There were several sharpshooters on the thistle plant. Taking pictures of insects on the thistle plant is challenging because it sways a lot in even the tiniest breeze, and the whole plant is spiky, so it's hard to get close to anything.

A trio of leaf hoppers

 

Stinkbug nymph

Three instars of large milkweed bugs

A jagged ambush bug hiding among the goldenrod

Candy striped leaf hopper

Beetle and bee

This particular species of leaf hopper isn't one I have seen very often in my backyard in the past, but I have seen them quite a bit this year. Maybe the only insect I have seen more of this year.

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

Wood frog, demonstrating its cryptic adaptation, which is a fancy way of saying it blends in really well with the fallen leaves.

 

I found a lot of crab spiders today for Arachnid Appreciation:

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Unfortunately, most of them were averse to having their picture taken: