A Continuing Story of Caterpillars

I don't really need to go for bug walks if everything interesting is going to happen on my back porch.

I have posted in a few days because of technical issues, but I did take pictures, and they illustrate a continuing scene, so I am going to put pictures from all four days here.

You may recall the caterpillar from the back porch tree that disappeared into what appears to be a large cocoon... That was on Saturday.

Sunday:

More caterpillars!

Monday:

 

Tuesday:

 Two interesting developments: there is a big hole in the front of the cocoonish thing, and I don't know if the caterpillars did that, or something else, and...

... there's more than one caterpillar in there.

Wednesday:

The hole has been closed up.

Also on Sunday:

One of the lady beetles on the back porch has eclosed.

 

This is how it looked about an hour later, after it had developed its color more.

Frogs in the stream

I found more of the woolly aphid/Hemiptera thingies on another tree:

This tree had even more than the other one.

I managed to annoy the eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar enough to get it to stick out its osmeterium:

The osmeterium is a defensive organ that the caterpillar sticks out to scare off predators. It looks like a tongue, but that is coming from a place above its head, not its mouth. It does add to the tiny, fake snake look, though.

I have not managed to get a good, in focus picture of this, but here you can see the extent that it goes to. Reportedly it smells, but I have never been that close to it.

Bush cricket

Today we were hit with the remnants of Hurricane Ida; in fact, we're still getting hit, and I am writing this blog in my basement because we are under a tornado watch, and I am terrified of tornadoes. Needless to say, I did not do a bug walk today, but during a lull in the rain I took the picture above of the closed-up cocoon, and so I walked around the area of the porch a little bit and saw this poor bee:

I don't really understand about the bumblebee way of life, but it seems like a lot of them just hang out on flowers instead of having a nest of some kind, and, well, they end up getting very wet when it rains. 

It was also much, much cooler today, as is fitting for the first day of meteorological autumn (September 1-November 30, different from astronomical autumn. And what I call social autumn, which begins the day after Labor Day).

Nursery web spiders are one of the best species of spiders because they are much more chill about having their picture taken and will often just sit there so you can take a whole bunch of shots. Every year I find them on the autumn joy sedum flowers, so bonus points to them for posing somewhere pretty. So, here's a chill spider in a pretty location for Arachnid Appreciation:

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I appreciate you, nursery web spider. Note the raindrops on the flowers. The spider seems dry, though. It was probably underneath the flowers while it was raining.