First, the good...
Backyard Bug of the Day:
I think this is the first fritillary (possibly great spangled fritillary) that I have seen in at least two years. I know it's not a good picture, but for a butterfly that I haven't even seen in years this is good enough.
The other good thing: in a summer when butterflies have been scarce, I actually got pictures of two species today!
Pearl crescent. They have been hanging around this part of the backyard quite a bit in the last several days.
The bad thing? I took my camera out in the backyard this morning, and after only a few minutes (which included the two butterfly pictures above) I was forced to flee inside by mosquitoes. They were aggressive, and numerous, and day-biting. I didn't want to put on bug repellent at the time, so I just gave up. Later, when I went for my woods walk and brought my camera I did put on bug spray, on my arms, neck, and a bit on my face, while also wearing insect repellent pants, and the mosquitoes did their best to make it a horribly unpleasant walk. Any time I stopped for a moment I was swarmed. When I tried to take pictures they would take the opportunity to try to bite me. It is very hard to focus a camera when there is a mosquito on your nose. When I got back to my backyard and continued to look for bugs I eventually had to give up because there were so many mosquitoes, and after walking in the woods for an hour and a half the insect repellent had apparently sweated off my arms. It was brutal. We had a lot of rain this summer, and in particular a couple of big storms at the end of August and the beginning of September, and all that water has led to swarms of mosquitoes. The small pond has dried up again, but for a couple of weeks it had water in it, and that water was full of mosquito larvae. No doubt thousands of them made it to adulthood (but I hope a lot of them dried up with the pond). And there are probably little puddles all over the place, in crevices of rocks, holes in trees, that are breeding grounds for the nasty little bloodsuckers. I have never seen so many mosquitoes in my life. I am actually hoping for an early frost now, because I just don't think I can deal with another month of this. Thank heavens for every creature out there that eats mosquitoes or their larvae, bats, dragonflies, elephant mosquito larvae...
Okay, this is an adult mosquito, not a larva, but I am pretty sure it is an elephant mosquito, which means when it was a larva it ate lots of other mosquito larvae, and for that I am grateful.
Bee on goldenrod. There were a lot of bees on the goldenrod today, but between their lack of cooperation and the mosquito assault this is the only one I got a photo of.
Look who decided to be a little bit cooperative today:
Today the deer trio did not run away when I came along. I happened to spot them because I saw a spider web and they were beyond it when I turned to see the spider. They are practically invisible when they are not moving:
Today I saw a fair number of spiders, of multiple species, and a lot of webs, too (several of which I walked through with my face). So, here's to Arachnid Appreciation:
The orb weaver on the front window.
Orchard spiders:
This time of year, if you walk around at the right time of day you can see a lot of spiderwebs illuminated by the sun. They are beautiful, and as an added bonus, easy to avoid walking through.
White micranetha
Another white micrathena, on a tree stump instead of its web because I broke its web with my face and then it ended up dangling from my arm, so I put it on this stump.
This spider was so small that the only reason I even saw it scurrying along its web thread is because it was moving. And I had to look through the camera to confirm that it was a spider, because it was too small to tell with the naked eye.
More webs:
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