Web of Life

As a human being, I am capable, unlike other animals, of willfully acting against my own best interests, so I took a walk with my camera today, in spite of my painful shoulder. I have no regrets.

I had a specific area that I wanted to take pictures of, or rather, specific plants. At the edge of the part of our property that we call the field, just before entering the woods, there is a spot where there is some goldenrod and quite a lot of "stinky tree" saplings. I knew from yesterday's walk what I would find there, and I was not disappointed. So today I have a Backyard Bug of the Day that I can show to you in three life stages: larva, pupa, and imago (adult). And the reason I could find all three stages there is because of those two specific plants; the goldenrod feeds the adult, and the stinky tree, properly known as ailanthus, is the host for the larvae (caterpillars), and that is also where they pupate. Have you guessed what today's Backyard Bug of the Day is?

Backyard Bug of the Day as a larva:

Ailanthus webworm

Ailanthus webworm pupa

Ailanthus webworm moth

The caterpillars have a communal web that is a mass of tangled silk threads. There will be caterpillars in various instars in there, and they pupate right in there, too. So here you can see both caterpillars and pupae. Also, frass.

Adult on an ailanthus leaf

Many of the young ailanthus plants have webs on them. This one has a small web with a few earlier instar caterpillars.

The nearby goldenrod flowers are obviously a great food source for the moths when they emerge. Obviously the bees like the goldenrod, too.

Three species of bees and a moth

Lots of bugs on the goldenrod today:

Assassin bug nymph. Any flowers where there are a lot of insects feeding on the flowers is a good place to hang out it you are a predatory insect.

Hemiptera, but I don't know if it is a predator, or if it is feeding on the plant.

I don't know what this plant is, but it is also a bee magnet now that it is in bloom:

Other Bugs:

Lady beetle romance

I found another monarch caterpillar today, in another part of the backyard.

And two of the originals (?) are still around:

And there were a couple more large milkweed bugs, too:

 

Brown hooded owlet moth caterpillar:

Such a shame that so vibrant a caterpillar turns into a dull, brown moth. There's probably some sort of life lesson in that, but I don't know what it is.

Tortoise beetle

Two kinds of katydids:

I saw a lot of butterflies today, and managed to get pictures of three, although none were very cooperative:

Cabbage white

I think this is a pearl crescent.

 

I don't know what this one is. I didn't precisely break my rule not to chase butterflies, but I did make a big effort to get a picture of it in this patch of wild lettuce. It was uncooperative:

Finally!

I see a lot of spiders in the woods these days, mostly spined micrathenas that have built their webs across the paths, but I have not been seeing them in the backyard much. So, no Arachnid Appreciation.

In Honor of Bees

 Happy National Honeybee Day!

It was hot today, and my shoulder still hurts, so I took a few pictures in my backyard and then we decided to go on a leisurely walk in the woods, for which I did not take my camera. So naturally, I needed it. But I had to make do with my phone for two of today's 3 Co-Bugs of the Day.

In honor of National Honeybee Day, Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

If you want to find insects, a sunny patch of goldenrod is a good place to look. There were a lot of bugs on this patch today, notably honeybees...

Lots of bumblebees and ailanthus webworm moths, too.

And I found some autumn clematis in the woods that also had a lot of honeybees (and some other bees and wasps). Side note: there are two nearly identical plants, virgin's bower and autumn clematis. One is invasive, the other is native. The difference is in the leaves; the native plant has toothed leaves (I did have to look that up). I am happy to report that this is the native plant. I have found both in my backyard and woods in the past.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day#2:

Monarch butterfly! Female. I have only seen a few of these this year, and this is the first one that let me get close enough for a picture. I REALLY wish I had brought my camera on my woods walk...

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:

Large milkweed bug. In past years there have been a lot of these in my milkweed patch, but so far this year I have only seen this one. Of course, I was away for almost a month, and stuck indoors for a couple of weeks, but still...

Okay, I think we'll backtrack a couple of days here for a bit...

Two days ago... (August 18th):

We have had a problem in our vegetable garden of some animal getting inside the fence and taking bites out of the tomatoes right on the plants. It has been driving my husband nuts. He was talking about it to someone the other day who told him that it's squirrels, and they are doing it for water. We are having a drought, and the city we live in is just on the border of the severe drought area and the extreme drought. We haven't had significant rain (more than a quarter of an inch at a time) in weeks. Maybe months. So water sources are drying up for plants and animals. So, to keep the tomatoes safe from squirrels my husband has started putting water out for the squirrels (and whatever other animals want to drink it). I had to rescue this robber fly from the water. Twice.

I checked the milkweed for the monarch caterpillars again, and this time I was able to find two, the big one, as you can see here...

... and one of the small ones. 

When we got back from our nighttime walk in the woods, I had a pretty visitor on the back porch:

Green lacewing. We saw several flying in the woods, and it was nice to see this one by the door when we got back.

Green lacewings have amazing eyes.

And then the next night (August 19):

I think this is a fishfly.

Now, back to today...

 

This monarch caterpillar had just finished molting. You can see the skin that it shed on the leaf behind it, all crumpled up. When I checked it later, the skin was gone; the caterpillar would have eaten it. It is a good source of protein. Notice also the pale color of its proleg feet; usually they are black, but having just molted it is has not deepened in color yet.

 

As you know, in general I have a non-interference policy about the insects and other wildlife in my backyard. It is not for me to decide who eats who, and the predators are necessary parts of the ecosystem, and they not only have just as much right to live as the other animals, but help to keep things in balance. I confess, though, that I removed this assassin bug nymph from this plant so it would not kill that monarch caterpillar there...

Another middle-instar monarch (the one I saved from the assassin). I don't know if this is a new one, or one of the others on a different plant. I could not find the big one today. I hope that is because it has gone off somewhere to pupate.

It is definitely katydid season, which you can hear both day and night. But today I saw two different species, this one on a milkweed plant...

... and this one on the screen door when we got back from the grocery store in the evening. This was the second night in a row we had a katydid visitor on the screen door (but last night's pictures were terrible. It was also a different species). There was a green lacewing on the back porch tonight, too (along with a lot of beetles), but not in a place where I could get a picture of it.