Fungi, Frogs, and I Can't Think of a Third Thing That Starts With F to Continue the Alliteration

I'm sort of overwhelmed by the number of pictures I took today, so in spite of all the thoughts inspired during my two and a half hours in the woods with my camera today, I think I am just going to post pictures. In the order I took them.

Pearl crescent butterfly:

 

Beetle larvae on milkweed. I have no idea what kind of beetle.

 

 

This is the first time I have ever seen more than one ailanthus webworm moth on one plant. Or even on the same day. What you can't see in this picture are all the other really tiny bugs swarming this plant. Or the bumblebee that was there, too.

You can see the bumblebee in this shot. 

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

Uncooperative blue butterfly. Well, it wasn't completely uncooperative. It let me see the blue side of its wings... from about 5 feet away.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Beetle. I know the name of it, I just can't think of it. Wait, no, I think I know it. Okay, I'll look it up... yes, I was right, this is a locust borer. On goldenrod.

Immature stinkbug on a fern. I think this is probably the same one I saw a couple of times last week, or whenever that was.

Now for some fungus:

The weird, egg-like fungus hasn't changed much, other than that the part that looked like egg whites has dried up a little.

I think this is turkey tail fungus.

I have been seeing water striders on the stream lately, which I was not seeing this time last year, because at this time last year the stream had completely dried up. I realized that I didn't remember having gotten any pictures of water striders so far this year... and you could make a pretty convincing argument that I still haven't...

These are hard to photograph because they are on the water, and I am not.

Now, more frogs:

You can't tell from the picture, but this one is at least twice the size of the other one. 

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

I found a tree with probably a thousand of these on some branches. I don't know what they are. My guess would be aphids (maybe woolly aphids?), but maybe also some kind of leaf hopper? They definitely look like some kind of Hemiptera.

Part of what makes me think they are aphids is that there are several different instars from incredibly tiny to just tiny. Even the big ones are so small you can't really tell what they are without looking through the camera.

They were all waving their fuzzy back ends around. It was weird to see.

See the yellowish blob? Many of them had those–drops of honeydew. I don't know what they butt-waving was for, but it is possible that they were flinging the honeydew away from themselves.

Look in the corner of the branches and see all the really tiny ones.

They were piled all over each other.

More of the weird fungus, perhaps weirder.

Hoverfly

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3 (there would have been four, but the pictures were no good of the fourth candidate):

Eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar. Less than a minute before I spotted this I was walking through the woods thinking about the fact that I haven't taken a picture in my backyard of a swallowtail butterfly in at least 2 years. I had earlier been thinking about how I have hardly seen any caterpillars this summer. Even though I have not been doing daily bug walks, I do spend a lot of time outside, and I am always looking for bugs, whether I have my camera or not, and I have found it odd and alarming that I am not finding caterpillars. And then I found this. It's late in its last instar, I think. The earlier instars look nothing like this; they look like bird poop. In this last instar they look a tiny bit like tiny snakes, with their false eyes.

Here you can see its real eyes.

Those are the real eyes. Caterpillar have a lot of eyes. And yet, oddly, they don't see very well.

I found three ants (one ran off) hovering over what I thought was a puddle of honeydew, but then figured it was not honeydew because one of the ants started rubbing its back end on it, and thought it at first appeared to be liquid, it then began to seem not so.

I have no idea what it is, maybe an egg mass of some kind?

Hopper nymph

Bumblebee on autumn... crud, why can't I remember the name of this flower? Sedum. Autumn sedum that is just beginning to bloom, even though by no measure is it autumn.

Cricket

Lately I have posted a lot of picture of things that I noticed on the back porch tree while I was sitting on the back porch. Well today I was sitting on the back porch where, in addition to the back porch tree there is a fern growing through the planks, and I noticed that there is frass all over the fern. So, naturally, I looked up to see where the frass had come from and saw two things:

A caterpillar on a branch...

... and something that appeared to be a large cocoon dangling from the end of the branch. It looks like it was made from a leaf that has been pulled in an sealed with silk. I assumed that it must have been made by another caterpillar to pupate inside of. It looked too large to be a cocoon for the caterpillar (which, by the way, makes two caterpillar in one day!).

I stayed on the back porch steps for a little while, and when I happened to glance at the branch again, I saw that the caterpillar was making its way down toward the cocoon. And then...

So. That was a surprise. It's also funny that all these weeks I have been sitting about a foot away from that branch, which I now see is almost completely denuded of leaves, and never once saw the caterpillar that was eating them at right about my eye level as I sit there. I am not as observant as I sometimes think I am.

I walked right through a spider web and ended up with the spider dangling from my arm, and that's the spider I have for Arachnid Appreciation:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

I think this is the white micrathena.

I did not see the spider here when I took the picture:

This plant is called lady's thumb, and the flowers are really tiny. So just imagine how tiny that spider is–I only saw it looking at the picture on the computer, and then I had to magnify it to see if it was really a spider. Can you find it?

Heat

It was so hot and humid today that I didn't even go for  woods walk. I couldn't bear even the thought of being so sweaty. BUT! I have some bugs anyway.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I think this is a new cricket species for me. It was on the front porch when we came home from running an errand tonight. I was disappointed to see so few insects attracted to the light, but at least I had this cool, new one.

Other Bugs:

Net-winged beetle, seen when I went out to get the mail. It did not move at all when I came in close to take its picture. I don't think it likes this weather either.

I don't know if this is the lady beetle that eclosed yesterday on the back porch tree, but it could be; that's where I saw it.

I had a shirt drying on the garden fence and went out rather late in the evening to get it. I discovered that I had left it too long and it was wet again from dew, and also there was a female katydid on it.

Since I had brought the camera outside to take a picture of the katydid I looked around to see if I could find any other bugs. I didn't last long because of mosquitoes (and, for the record, it was still hot and humid), and I wasn't finding things anyway, except for this:

Assassin bug nymph
 

Also out in the dark I found a single spider for Arachnid Appreciation:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Goldenrod crab spider. On goldenrod.