The Scourge

My bug walk today was incredibly underwhelming. I saw more gypsy moth caterpillars than anything else. They are big and fat, resting on tree trunks, probably getting ready to pupate. Too bad for them if I find them before they can. I sometimes find them wandering around on the ground, too, probably heading off somewhere to pupate. A few weeks ago I was trying to confirm the identification of some other caterpillars and came across a website that compared eastern and forest tent caterpillars, and gypsy moth caterpillars. For each species they listed the host plants; for the two species of tent caterpillars it listed about half a dozen kinds of trees, but for gypsy moths it listed about half a dozen and then said, "and about 250 other species." I was amazed. That is a lot of tree species, and it is a big part of the problem with gypsy moths–they'll eat pretty much anything. I have found them on just about every species of tree in my backyard. I can't even identify most of the tree species in my backyard, but I have killed gypsy moth caterpillars on most of them. It's a real downer to my bug walk, and the really ironic part of that is it cheers me up when I see dead gypsy moth caterpillars that have been killed by the fungus. And I am a person who likes insects!

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Some kind of tree hopper. This particular species was not in my books, although there was a similar one in a different color, and I supposed it could be the same thing. It's weird that I never see tree hoppers on trees...

There were not many other bugs:

 Black firefly. Lately I have been seeing a LOT of these, which is kind of amazing because I don't remember having had them in my backyard before this year.

 Ladybeetle larva...

... and ladybeetle pupa.

 Plant bug on common mullein

 I should really look this up...

Robber fly with prey

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Six-spotted orb weaver with prey.

This picture has to be in Arachnid Appreciation because the caterpillar is sharing the daisy flea bane plant with a jumping spider.

Bad Mannered Bees

Yesterday evening when I went out onto the back porch to enjoy the summer night I didn't see any fireflies. I don't know why, but they weren't there. That was disappointing, but I don't know enough about fireflies to even speculate if that was a problem, but then late last night I saw that familiar green flashing on the window screen. There were fireflies out last night after all. So...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Firefly. Yes, I know, all you can see is the glow, but that's the best part anyway.

Tonight when we came home this was on the front porch:

 It's not lit up because the porch light was on, but you can just barely see the glowing part.

 I had hoped it would spread its wings to fly so I could get that shot, which would show the light-up part better, but instead it did that infuriating beetle thing where it just dropped to the ground and scurried away.

Other Bugs:

 The daisy flea bane seems like the perfect flower for sweat bees; small bee, small flower. There were a lot of them on these flowers today.

 I saw the exact same scenario last week. The caterpillar was smaller then, but we've got a sweat bee and a caterpillar on daisy flea bane, with aphids in there, too.

You don't have to be a tiny bee to feed here, though. You could be a large wasp.

 What bugs do you see here?

There were several buffalo tree hopper nymphs on the stem of this plant:

 There was a caterpillar on a leaf, too.

 Gypsy moth pupa and caterpillar.

 Spittle bug

The milkweed is still popular with the bees:

 

 And this, which I think is a hard-headed fly, not a wasp, as it appears. I might have that name wrong...

There are plenty of flowers to go around, but sometimes the bees get kind of... pushy:

 Tiny bee feeding on milkweed flowers...

 ... and what's that blur on the lower right?

 Bye bye little bee.

 The same thing happened with the honeysuckle:

 Eastern tiger swallowtail, male, I think.

 Enjoying some honeysuckle nectar...

 ... and who comes along?

 So rude.

 

 I don't know what this is, but I am going to make a mostly uneducated guess, based on what I know about other bugs, and where I found this: I think this is the pupal case of a sawfly that has emerged and flown away.

 

In a similar vein, here is the shed skin of a white marked tussock moth caterpillar. Some caterpillars (like monarchs) eat the skin they shed, but it seems to me that the hairy ones don't. I don't blame them.

In addition to the firefly, there were a few moths on the front porch when we got home this evening, too:

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I don't think I have ever seen this kind of jumping spider before.

Quite elegant.

This spider looks like it's relaxing in an invisible hammock.

Poor Tree

I didn't notice at the time, but apparently it was really windy last night. I found out when I walked out the back door and saw that the back porch tree had been blown down, broken. I am very disappointed about this. I really loved back porch tree. I figured my husband would be pleased, because he didn't like having a tree growing through the back porch–he kept saying it was going to tear the house apart, but he let it grow there because I loved it, and I think he felt bad when he saw it. It was a charming tree. I am not even sure what kind it was–no, actually, it would be more accurate to say I really didn't know what kind it was. It might have been a poplar. I knew that ultimately in the battle between tree and back porch that the back porch would win, but I am still sad about it. That tree harbored many interesting bugs through the course of its life. I am sure all of the ants that have been living in it this year, tending their flocks of aphids, found it to be quite a shock:

There were ants crawling around the broken base where it is stuck fast between the boards of the porch. You can see why it fell, the trunk was only about half an inch thick, and as it got taller and leafier, it was obviously susceptible to wind. But I am still sad that it broke, and I feel bad for these poor, confused ants.

I don't know what that little nymph is, but it also had a home in the back porch tree, I think.

Backyard Bugs of the Day:

This is the second grasshopper I have seen this year, and the first I have been able to get a picture of. It was in the rock garden...

... and tried rather hard to hide among the leaves of the ground cover, creeping myrtle.

I saw a tiny grasshopper nymph, too, which hopped away before I could get a picture of it, but I looked around until I found it again:

Then I realized I might not have found it again, I might have found a different one altogether, because there were a LOT of grasshopper nymphs in the rock garden.

There might even have been more than one species, based on the colors, but they also just might have been different instars of the same species.

Also in the rock garden:

Dragonfly. Female blue dasher, I think. The male is blue.

Sawfly larva

The space underneath the rain gauge has always been popular with insects and spiders, and lately it has been home to a colony of ants. It is not a good place for a colony of ants, and a lot of these eggs (or larva?) fell to the ground when I pulled the rain gauge out to empty it today.

Weevil

Katydid nymp

Black firefly

I found a new (to me and my backyard) species of sawfly larva today. It does a similar threat display to the other ones I have posted before, but while those hold on with their front legs and wave their back ends around, these hold on with their prolegs and rear up in the front. The one you see in the background here kept flopping around, and dropping from needle to needle on this pine tree.

 I think this is a gypsy moth that has died from the fungus. While this year has not been anywhere near as bad as the last two for gypsy moth infestation, it has been pretty bad. I haven't been finding a lot of them, though I do find several every day, but I know there are more than I am seeing. How do I know this? The ground under some trees is covered in frass. So I may not be seeing them down low, but they are definitely up in those trees in some numbers. This particular tree had about half a dozen of them on its trunk. One was alive (I changed that), and the others were dead from the fungus. I have been finding a lot more alive than dead from fungus, though, so in general I don't think it's doing much.

 Crane fly

There were lots of bees around today; there are several things blooming in the backyard that are attracting them, mostly raspberries and milkweed.

 Ladybeetle larva

More recently hatched ladybeetle larva. The one above was about 3 times as long as this one.

There is something else, something quite tiny, photobombing the ladybeetle larva here. (They are crawling on the picnic umbrella, which is lying down on the picnic table because the wind broke it, too).

 Some kind of swallowtail butterfly. It was too uncooperative to warrant me trying to identify it.

 Green lacewing on the window.

 I think this is a syrphid fly (hover fly) larva.

 Assassin bug. It's really hard to tell from any of the pictures I took, but I think it is feeding on a spider.

Let's play Can You See the Moth?

 Insect eggs

 Looper caterpillar

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I did not see a spider when I took this picture; can you see it?

How about now?