Bug Schedules

 Lately I have felt like insects must have calendars and traditions. I look at memory posts online, and recently on many days I have seen a bug for the first time this year on the exact same date when that bug was Backyard Bug of the Day a few years ago.

Like today. I don't remember which year, but on this date a few years ago I featured an American Copper butterfly as Backyard Bug of the Day. And today...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

American Copper butterfly. Note the broken wing. Butterflies can still fly with pretty large sections of their wings missing.

Rarely do I get to see the dorsal side (this view) AND the ventral side of a butterfly's wings.

 One great thing about this butterfly is obviously how cooperative it was. It did flit around a bit, but you can see that it allowed me to get pretty close, and at one point flew over and landed right in front of me. Other butterflies were not so cooperative today; when I had just finished photographing this one some kind of swallowtail swooped past me and the soared up into the treetops, like it was making sure I saw it, but refused to stop for pictures. Then later I saw what could have been monarch butterflies a couple of times. They zoomed past me too fast for me to identify them. As you know if you have been reading this blog lately, I am not getting pictures of butterflies, but I do see them quite often, which I always love.

I didn't exactly do a bug walk today. I did wander a bit with my camera, and I also took pictures of bugs that I saw while I was weeding the garden, sitting on the back porch steps, and specifically looking for bugs I have been keeping an eye on. Other Bugs from today (June 30):

This is one I have been keeping an eye on. The eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar has spent most of the last week lounging on its silk hammock. About a week ago I saw it wandering around on this sassafras tree where its hammock is, and this evening I saw it actually eating a leaf! But by the time I went to take its picture, it had gone back to the hammock. It is definitely bigger now. I think it will become a pupa soon.

 A rare glimpse of its head. (I took this picture a couple of days ago).

 I found the furcula caterpillar in this un-restful pose:

... but later I found it eating, too!

I think I have figured out what those beetle larvae on the pussywillow bush have become. Instead of larvae, today I found these beetles scattered around on leaves all over the bush.

Juvenile praying mantis in the rock garden, blending in quite well. I am surprised I even saw it.
 

After dark the wasps on the nest on the railroad crossing sign were much mellower, so I was able to get closer with my camera. I could see inside the nest, though, and the ones inside were quite active. 

I found this fish fly (I think) on the window screen on the back porch. When I saw it it had its wings splayed out, but by the time I went in the house and got my camera, it had closed up.

This leafhopper was on the window screen, too. That gives you a sense of how tiny it was. It could probably have fit through the screen if it wanted to. 

We're out of order, going from daytime sighted bugs, to nighttime, back to day... It's a pity I didn't have my camera on my night hike tonight, because I saw some interesting bugs in the woods after dark.

For a couple of days there has been a lady beetle larva on a leaf of the back porch tree. I can see it from where I sit on the steps. I saw it in the afternoon, looking normal, but by evening...

It looks like it is standing up, but what it has done is anchored its back end to the leaf to prepare to become a pupa.

About an hour or so after I noticed that, it became...

 

A pupa! The back end of it is anchored to the leaf, but weirdly, the pupa can move, sometimes "standing" straight up, and at others down against the leaf like this. When it's standing if you disturb it it will go down like this. I read somewhere once that they do that as a form of defense, slapping down on anything that tries to attack them.

Because it had just turned into a pupa its color was pale, and not fully developed. If I look at it tomorrow I think it will be a darker color.

On milkweed:

Plume moth

Flower beetle

Arachnid Appreciation:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. 

Flower crab spider eating a plume moth on milkweed flowers.

A couple of nights ago while out for a night hike I was wearing my hat with insect netting, which generally keeps me from noticing when I walk through a spider web. But when I walked through the support thread for this spider's web...

She's a big spider; I think if she sat on a quarter her legs would hang over the sides. Her web was huge, too. The orb part (meaning the webbish part, not including the supporting threads) was at least two feet high by more than a foot wide. The anchor threads went from the ground up way over my head. I walked through a side support, but it didn't seem to hurt the web at all. This web was just down the path from the house, so I went in and got my camera to take these pictures.

I accidentally hit one of the lower support threads with my foot, and she pulled her legs in against her body, as spiders sometimes do, as if they are trying to make themselves invisible by being smaller. It didn't work, she was still huge. 

Earlier on that walk we saw another spider of the same species, also with a pretty big web, but neither the spider nor the web were as big as this one.