Rainy Relief

I thought I would not be doing a bug walk or a blog post today because for the first time in weeks, it rained!

It wasn't as much as we needed, but it's something. It cleared up by the early evening, so I went out with my camera.

I found a new bug, and it wins an award for acting as well as being Backyard Bug of the Day:

It's not dead. It's just pretending to be dead, so I won't eat it. There was never any chance of that, but somehow I can't ever convince the bugs of that.

Oh, look, it's moving its legs. I guess it's fine.

But not cooperative.

It's a beetle. I haven't tried to look it up.

Other Bugs:

For a while I thought all I was going to find today was caterpillars. It's hard to tell in this picture, or maybe impossible to tell, but this one was sheltering under a layer of webbing.

The eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar was exactly where I saw it yesterday, like it hasn't even moved. Any maybe it hasn't.

Long-legged fly

Crane fly. Female.

Firefly, hanging out, waiting for darkness

I saw quite a few bumblebees...

Some were sheltering from the weather...

... but others were busy collecting nectar. This one is on milkweed.

This one looks like it may have been caught in the rain.

 Plant hopper nymph

Egg, covered in a droplet of rain. I don't know what kind of egg this is.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Young Bugs

Today during my bug walk I started to realize that there was a common feature to a lot of the bugs I was finding. The song that started to play in my mind was "We Are Young." Overall the lyrics of the song have nothing to do with the bugs I saw, other than that title line. Many of the bugs, in fact, most of the bugs I saw today were immatures, nymphs and larvae. It's midsummer, so that makes sense, it's prime breeding and growing season for a lot of species of insects.
Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

This is one of those youthful bugs, and brown lacewing larva (I am pretty sure, anyway).

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 

Eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar on Virginia creeper leaf. Caterpillars, of course, are larvae.

The caterpillar was not alone on the leaf: while I was focusing on it I saw a mite crawl over it. I didn't get that shot, but there were many other mites on the leaf:

Okay, technically this picture should be in Arachnid Appreciation...

More larvae and nymphs:

Caterpillar

Two kinds of nymphs. The spiky, green one is a buffalo tree hopper nymph. I don't know what kind of hopper nymphs the white, fuzzy ones are.

Leaf hopper nymph

Leaf hopper nymph


More caterpillars:

Even younger than nymphs:

Eggs. Green stinkbug eggs, and I know that because I saw the stinkbug laying them. Unfortunately I accidentally scared her away before she finished. Otherwise she would have laid more of them.

Now some imagos, or adult insects:

Candy striped leaf hopper

I have a blog rule that if I manage to get a good picture of a tumbling flower beetle it becomes Backyard Bug of the Day for that day. This is not that day:

I got a decent picture of a thrips, though, which I didn't even see when I took the picture.

Bumblebees on milkweed. I have two milkweed patches in my backyard, and this one was full of bumblebees today. At any given moment at least half of the plants had at least one bumblebee on them.

Leaf bug

Moth

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Harvestman

Strange Ways

While I was outside doing my bug walk today it felt like I was finding a lot of bugs, but going through the pictures it seems I just took a lot of pictures of a few bugs. I found enough good ones, though, that I have 3 Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Case bearing leaf beetle larva. Now, you're probably thinking that doesn't look like a larva (and I am not talking about the fuzzy nymph in the lower right corner of the picture). The larva is inside the "case," which is made of its own feces. It's a strange way to live. I have only rarely caught a glimpse of a larva inside one of these. Occasionally their heads poke out the bottom. This one moved a little, but I never saw the larva.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Dragonfly

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:

Buffalo tree hopper nymph

Other Bugs:

Caterpillar pretending to be a twig. It's a pretty convincing performance, except that twigs don't grow out of the edge of leaves.

Plume moth on milkweed

Beetles on black-eyed Susan. I think that the holes in the petals were made by beetles eating them.

Caterpillar on daisy fleabane stem. It has eaten most of the flowers off the plant.

Unicorns

Today was one of those days when it's hard to focus the camera because the viewfinder is fogging up. I don't like those kinds of days. I don't think the bugs do, either.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Thorn mimic treehopper nymphs. They really should be called unicorn bugs.

They were clustered on the stem of a goldenrod plant.

As with many insects that suck the juices from plants, these secrete honeydew, a sugary liquid that ants eat, and so there were ants watching over them.

Other Bugs:

 And speaking of insects that suck plant juices and secrete honeydew... I have never seen so many aphids as I have this year. What's odd is that last year I hardly saw any. I know people don't generally like them, but I think they're kind of interesting. And if they want to suck the life out of invasive plants, as these are doing, it's find with me.

 Another mystery has been solved! I found out what this is from reading the account of someone else who found a leaf like this and put it in a jar to see what would come out of the chrysalides: it was tiny wasps. Which is what I expected.

I felt so adamantly that there should be bugs on the milkweed flowers that when I found there were none I waited around in the milkweed patch for about five minutes until some showed up. There were a few bees:

 Honey bee

 Bumblebee

I think this is a hoary edge skipper butterfly. It's a new one for me. I guess that means it should be Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2.

 Arachnid Appreciation:
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Spider on milkweed buds