Grateful For Whatever I Find

The world is a beautiful place, and I am glad to be here in it. And glad that today on my walk I found a bug at a level that I could take its picture.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 A big, beautiful moth. It is possible this has been Backyard Bug of the Day already this year, but I don't care.  This is about 2 inches from head to back of wings. I should know what kind it is, but I don't.

Edit: Adding more pictures from the porch light. This is what happens when I write the blog early...

 An unusual porch light visitor. As in, this is not the kind of bug that usually is attracted to the porch light. I am not sure if this is a fly of some kind or a wasp.

 I think this is a fish fly.

It's been a while since there's been any Arachnid Appreciation:
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Bug Tours

I've been giving Backyard Bug Tours this week. Which is to say, family members who have come to see me have joined me on my daily slow amble through the backyard, and I point out the bugs I see as we walk. I don't have my camera on these jaunts, I am just trying to spend a little time outside and get some required exercise, but I just can't help looking for bugs.

For photography's sake, the front porch light is still the best chance for me right now.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 A very handsome, little moth - about 1/2 inch long

A few more moths:

 Ailanthus webworm moth - one of the few I can actually identify. It's pretty distinctive, though.

And something else interesting:

I saw something dangling from the porch light and thought it was tangled remains of a spider web, but I happened to look closer and realized they are insect eggs of some kind.

Come to Me

Today I am showing you the bugs that came to me. I didn't have to go looking for them.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I thought I could easily look this up, but it turns out, no. So... it's a moth.

 Other side - because it was on the storm door.

There were quite a lot of bugs on the front porch tonight, but not many in positions I could photograph them from (and a few just flew away before I had a chance).

 So I just got this one.

This stink bug was on the storm door earlier in the day.

Yes, I Know What I Said

I know I said I wasn't going to be doing this, and really I am not, but some days you get lucky, and today I got lucky in a very small way (and small ways count after the very bad luck I've had lately), and just outside my house, without even taking a bug walk, I found a cool bug at a height I could photograph under my current physical limitations.

So... Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Milkweed tussock moth caterpillar. On a milkweed plant.

I did take a walk around my backyard this morning, sans camera. It was cool and beautiful, and I saw quite a few bugs. But you'll just have to trust me on that, I guess.

That's not to say I didn't take any other bug pictures today. This next bit could be called Bug Watching From the Comfort of Your Own Couch:

 You know how I have been lamenting the lack of dragonflies buzzing around above my yard in the evenings when I sit on the back porch? Well, maybe they've been hanging around the front of the house. I was sitting on the couch, and looked up at the skylight and saw that there were dragonflies zooming around outside the window. I took a bunch of atrocious pictures...

 At times I was seeing three and four dragonflies at a time. Sometimes they seemed to be going at each other, but they may have just been targeting the same prey insects. It's hard to tell, but there are two together here.

Needless to say, this is a perfectly useless way to photograph dragonflies.

But you get the idea.

 

 You can tell this is a dragonfly, right?

There were a bunch of birds, including at least one swallow, zooming around, too. There must have been a lot of prey bugs swarming around. Or the birds were going after the dragonflies, which is also possible.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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I didn't have to go looking for this jumping spider that looks like it has a red mustache. It was right on the screen door.

Hello There

Hello Backyard Bug Fans! I am sorry to have left you in a lurch, but it was unavoidable. Remember how I was sick for a while? Well, I was sicker than I thought, and I just got out of the hospital. I have been involuntarily absent from my backyard for the last 12 days. I missed it so much! It was very hard for me to have my only contact with the world of beautiful, little, living things be through a window. I saw some bugs from that vantage point (and posted a few blurry Hospital Bugs of the Day on facebook, even though I couldn't blog), which was nice to see, but it is not the way I want to experience nature, as you know if you have been reading this blog. I keep telling you to go outside, and you know that's what I like to do.

My wonderful friends helped to bring nature to me by posting pictures on facebook of Get Well Bugs of the Day, and it was a wonderful gift to me. Some friends found pictures of phenomenal bugs on the internet, and some took pictures themselves for me. One friend went out to try to find some bugs for me one afternoon and though the bugs were too shy to pose for her, she did manage to find some other pretty things; flowers, leaves, trees, just the general loveliness of nature, and, as she pointed out, all within 50 feet of her house. And that, right there, is what I have been trying to convey all along. There is incredible beauty all around, and you can find it if you just look. It might be tiny, it might be something you have walked past a million times and just didn't notice, but this is a beautiful world. So go outside, enjoy the loveliness, and find out what's within fifty feet of your house.

So, having said that, yes, I did do a bug walk today, of sorts. I had some major surgery, so I wasn't up to much of a walk, especially carrying my camera (which is heavier than I remember), and I can really only take pictures of bugs around my eye level because of mobility issues, so I don't have much for you. And I am not even going to try a bug walk in the next few days - this is not an announcement that I am back, just an explanation for not having shared any bugs with you lately (I really wish my last blog before this incident had been a better one...). And a promise to come back when I can. For now, though, I can't do this well, and if that is the case, I think it is best to wait until I can (provided I was doing it well in the first place... hmmm...).

In the meantime, go outside and look around.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This tiny katydid was waiting for me on the front porch when I got home.

Many Random Bugs greeted me on my return to the backyard (Yes, I am anthropomorphizing), but not many would pose for me:

 Candy striped leaf hopper

 Leaf hopper nymph

 One of those huge bumblebees

 Long-legged fly

P.S. I had some Sky Time tonight, and the choral cacophany of insect sounds is like I have never heard. It's wonderful to be home to my backyard.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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A Small Offering

Sorry, no time for a bug walk today, so I had to rely on the porch light to attract bugs. It didn't attract many.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is either a sawfly or a wasp.

Random Bugs:

 When there is a katydid on the porch, we try really hard not to let it in the house.

 A hopper

 That moth that is the color of Cheetos

Click beetle

Dusk

Procrastination is the word of the day today from the backyard, although I am not sure it is really a fair word to describe why I didn't get around to doing my bug walk until dusk was approaching, I just had other fish to fry. Not literally. I don't cook. And I don't eat fish. But I was out and about for the day, and didn't want to get up early to do the bug thing today. I did, however, legitimately procrastinate in writing this blog, which I am now sorry about. Fortunately, I don't have a lot to post, so this won't take long. Wait, that's not fortunate. Well, it is, because I am tired. Moral of the story: Don't procrastinate.

The thing about almost dusk is, it's not a great time to find bugs. And the dim lighting makes it easier to be fooled by things like this:

 Ooh, caterpillar! Nope, blotchy leaf.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Random Bugs:

 Ladybug

 Assassin bug

 Some bug that I should look up but am too lazy and tired to right now.

 Ambush bug

 Female wedge shaped beetle (and something else we are not telling the arachnophobes about. Arachnophobes, don't look!)

 Male wedge shaped beetle. I am happy to finally be able to show this to you. I am revising my previous analogy of what its antennae look like, though. Not moose antlers crossed with a feather, moose antlers crossed with fake eyelashes.

 This fly is just weird...

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Here's what we're not showing the arachnophobes.

 Tiny web on my new woods trail

 Tiny spider on the tiny web

The thing about being a goldenrod crab spider is, you want to blend in...