Themes

 I had to check the date on my last post to figure out when I posted–I didn't realize it had been so long. I just couldn't cope with the weather. For the last two weeks it's been the kind of weather that keeps me in the house (heat waves) or keeps me from bringing my camera out (rain), and sometimes both. Last week we had a heat wave, with thunderstorms in the evening. It's been a frustrating couple of weeks, weather-wise. But today there was a break in the rain, and it was cool outside (68ºF when I went for my walk–quite a contrast with Monday's 90ºF), so I took my camera for a walk.

For most of the walk it felt like a waste of effort to be carrying the camera, because I didn't see a lot of bugs–it had rained in the morning, and was overcast and chilly, and the bugs didn't want to be out and about, I suppose. But then I found a bug I had never seen before, which you know is rare for me these days, and that made it worth it. I almost didn't bother to try to take its picture, because it didn't look like much at first (and I thought it might be a moth fly, and they are very uncooperative, often not worth the effort to try to get a picture), and the lighting was bad with the overcast sky, but I made the effort, and it cooperated, and so here is Backyard Bug of the Day:

According to the internet, this is Anotia uhleri, a species of derbid planthopper. When I was looking at it through my camera, I was mystified, with no idea what it was. Some kind of hopper was something I considered, but also I thought it might be a type of fly, or even a strange moth. 

Other than that, there were basically two themes to today's bug walk. First, Ailanthus webworm moths:

They were everywhere. Well, everywhere there was goldenrod blooming.

I think I saw more ailanthus webworm moths than I saw in the previous decade of bug photography combined. 

Goldenrod is just generally popular, but even in this shot where I was taking an establishing shot of a fly, notice all the ailanthus webworm moths on the flowers.

These various pictures were taken all over our property, in the field, along paths, in meadows in the woods. Of course, what all of these locations have in common are ailanthus trees. (aka tree of heaven, or my name for it, stinky tree).

Ailanthus is the host plant for the ailanthus webworm moth:

They have communal webs with multiple instars of caterpillars in them. I have never found information about how their life cycle plays out that way, but...

... in addition to caterpillars you can also find multiple chrysalides in the webs.

 Like I said, goldenrod is popular with lots of insects, including some that don't feed on the flowers, but on the things that feed on the flowers. After all, if you want to eat insect, a great place to hang out is the place where the insects go to eat. Just ask this jagged ambush bug nymph:

I didn't see a lot of bees today, because they don't really love this yucky, rainy weather. But they generally love goldenrod.

As do various species of looper caterpillars.

 The other theme for the day was crickets and katydids:

I found this cricket near my back door when I got home from running errands. This cricket is why I brought my camera out in the first place today. I saw a lot of crickets and katydids today.

Then in a patch of weedy grass (or rather, invasive species grass) in a clearing in the woods my husband noticed a bunch of insects, which turned out to be a LOT of crickets and katydids. 

The grass is thick and tall, and leafy, and the crickets and katydids had lots of hiding places, so they were hard to spot, and easy to lose when they wanted to be lost. So I didn't get many pictures.

And the pictures mostly look like this.

This cricket is missing a hind leg. It can still get around, though.

It's a pity I didn't see any grasshoppers today. That patch of grass is perfect grasshopper habitat, and then I could have had all three odonata types.

So, what else did I see on my walk today...

Nymph of some kind of hemiptera. Leaf footed bug, probably. It's big for a nymph, it's probably going to become an adult at its next moult.

These beetle larvae are still feeding on the cucamelon leaves in my garden...

... and the chrysalis on a bean leaf has turned a darker color, so that is probably going to eclose soon.

Tiny moth on grape leaf

This squirrel was noisily gnawing on a butternut.

People are so afraid of these wasps, but this one was quite placid...

... and when I startled it by breaking of a twig to get a closer look, it just scurried around to the back side of the leaf and peeked over at me. How could you not love that little face?

Cicada exuvia–the shed skin left behind when the nymph molted to become an adult.

Scorpionfly. I think this is a female; the males have a longer, curlier abdomen/tail. I saw a couple of these today.

Milkweed tussock moth caterpillars. Soon these will all decide that they've had enough togetherness and wander off alone. I have had many broods of these on the milkweed near my back porch this year, sometimes finding them communally like this, and sometimes finding just one caterpillar off on its own.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a colony (I don't know if that's the right word) of beech blight aphids on a branch of a beech tree. It's the first and only place I have seen them this year. They were all over the beech trees in the woods last year. From what I have read, they periodically have huge population booms for a couple of years, and that is obviously what happened last year, and to a smaller extent the year before. I don't know if the reason I am not seeing them this year is because their boom is over, or because the beech trees are suffering from beech leaf disease, and that is somehow affecting the aphids. I hope the former, but if the beech trees die, inevitably that will affect these aphids:

They are not all as fuzzy as they were when I found them a couple of weeks ago, and they were not as active; another common name for these insects is boogie woogie aphids, because when they feel threatened they wave their fuzzy butts around, which makes it look like this is a giant insect dance party. These didn't feel much like dancing today, which could be because of the grim weather.

Here you can see a few of them excreting drops of honeydew. These insects are unpopular with people who have beech trees in their yards, because when you get these population booms, collectively they excrete a lot of honeydew, which is basically sugar water, and it covers anything below the colony with sticky fluid which then causes a black fungus to grow. I admit, it's unsightly. But kind of interesting. 

Monarch butterfly egg! I saw this a couple of days ago on a walk without my camera, and have been waiting for a chance to get a better look at it to be sure it was a monarch egg. It has changed color in the interim, which means either it is going to hatch soon (the dark spot is probably the caterpillar's head), or it has been infected with something (which is possible because there's more dark spots than just the one that is probably the caterpillar's head. I hope it hatches and thrives. None of the other monarch caterpillars I have seen this year have made it past the earliest instars. I have seen a lot of milkweed leaves with leaf damage such as would be made by a first instar monarch, but nothing beyond that. It's discouraging. So I hope this one defies the odds and becomes a butterfly.

The Bad Part of My Bug Walk:

The invasive ailanthus tree is not just host to the ailanthus webworm moth, it is also the favored host of the horrible spotted lanternfly. This one is on a goldenrod plant, but this particular clearing has a lot of ailanthus sapplings–I cut them down, and they grow back.

I was thinking happily the other day that I haven't seen any of these in a couple of weeks, but then I realized that I also haven't been out in my backyard as much in the last couple of weeks, between going away for a few days, and the bad weather...

So now there are adult spotted lanternflies, in addition to the nymphs. I found several of each, nymphs and adults. I tried catching them with the bottle method you see online, and found that it doesn't work as well on skinny sapplings as it purportedly does on bigger tree trunks. But I caught a few. It's too bad they are so harmful, because they are cool looking bugs. I don't know where they get the lanternfly part of their name, but you can see where the spotted part comes in.

I was going to add all the pictures I took on my phone in the last couple of weeks on walks without my camera, but it's late, and I'm tired... If I feel motivated tomorrow maybe I'll just do a post of all of those...

Arachnid Appreciation:

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This nursery web spider has been hanging out on this milkweed plant for at least a week.

I walked into this spined micrathena's web, but fortunately was able to back out without breaking it.

A couple of days ago I noticed what I thought was a monarch butterfly egg on the underside of a milkweed leaf, and I have been wanting to bring my camera out for days to be able to look at it closer with my macro lens to find out of that's what it was. Today I had the chance, and was not very happy to find a spider on the same leaf. I didn't want the caterpillar to hatch and immediately get eaten by the spider. So, I relocated the spider to another plant nearby. None of the monarch caterpillars I have seen this year have made it past the early instars. I would like this one to have a chance of lasting more than a minute.

Uncooperative spider...

Learning

 One of the best things about this whole Backyard Bug project is learning. About bugs, about plants, about fungus–things I learned directly because looking for information about bugs related to things they eat, or where they live, but also things I learned just because spending so much time looking at the little details of my backyard natural world has led to observations of things other than bugs. Admittedly I don't bother to look up a lot of things, but often when I do, I learn new things about related subjects. Like trying to identify a bug I have seen often means I find out about the bugs that are similar, but not the one I am trying to identify.

What a muddled explanation. All to say, when I found today's Backyard Bug of the Day, I knew what it was, because I have spent enough time looking for identifications of other bugs that I recognized it when I saw it. I still looked it up, but I had a wonderful moment of thinking, "Oh, I know what that is."

So here it is, Backyard Bug of the Day:

This is an antlion, which I found on my front porch when I got home this evening. I know I have seen these before; years before I started my BBotD project there was one in my house, caught in the cupola at the top of the house, trying desperately to get out by bashing against the windows. I captured it and brought it outside, and left it sitting on a flower. At the time I thought it was a dragonfly. I didn't know much about bugs then, not even enough to know that this looks more like a damselfly than a dragonfly–at the time I didn't know those were not the same thing. But now I know it is neither a dragonfly nor a damselfly, and it's not even in the same order. 

For the last couple of days part of an antlion has been stuck to the wall of my front porch, caught in a spider web:

But just on wings along I wasn't able to identify it, or recognize it, really.

There was another insect on the front porch that looks a tiny bit similar:

Fishfly. Similar enough to antlions that in the past I might have easily confused the two, a bit like I used to not notice the difference between monarch butterflies and viceroy butterflies, but now that I know the difference, they don't look the same at all. Interestingly, antlions and fishflies used to be in the same order, but now they are classified differently, and are in separate orders (Neuroptera and Megaloptera respectively). These are also very similar to Dobsonflies, which I would love to see on my front porch.

Since we're out on the front porch with these, I'll post the rest of the porch pictures before I go on to my walk pictures...

An interesting thing about this moth... It looks like this on the wall...

... but when it moved to the screen door the colors looked different. I assume it had to do with the angle of the light, or something like that, but it surprised me. I like it better like this.

And here's a close-up:

Hm. Well, there were a lot of bugs on the porch, but apparently I didn't take pictures of many of them!

Anyway, I took my camera on my walk today...

The promethea caterpillar is still around. It's hard to tell, but I think it has gotten bigger in the last couple of days since I first saw it. I am still waiting to see if the knobs on its back turn red.

I found part of a bug in the stream. Not enough for me to be able to identify it. The wings are a bit like a stonefly, but I have never seen a stonefly this big.

Frogs have been scarce lately, which may have something to do with the fact that there is almost no water left in the stream.

Japanese beetles

Leaf footed bug, I think.

I detoured into the meadow in the hopes of finding grasshoppers and katydids. I was surprised to only see a couple of them. I only got pictures of this one.

Tiny ailanthus webworm caterpillar. I finally looked up something I have been curious about for a while. Ailanthus tree is an invasive species, and the preferred host of the ailanthus webworm moth. I have wondered for a while if the moth/caterpillar is also an introduced species, and if it is invasive. Because if it only feeds on the ailanthus tree, then it's fine to have around, I figured. Ailanthus is also the preferred host of the spotted lanternfly, but spotted lanternflies will feed on lots of species of trees and vines, that is what makes them such a menace. But according to what I read, ailanthus webworm caterpillars mostly only feed on ailanthus trees, so they are actually beneficial, because they are eating an invasive species (but not really, because they don't eat enough to harm the trees, which is how c-oevolution sometimes works). But in their adult stage as moths they are pollinators. So... that puts them in the plus column. All in all, a fine species to have around, which I have to say is quite a relief to me.

Most of the bugs I saw today were really uncooperative:

First time in a while I've seen a frog on the bathtub (there were two frogs, actually, but the other one was in the tub, and dove under when I showed up with my camera). The water level has gone down ever so slightly–we've had very little rain the last few weeks, and the drip from the pipe into the tub is veeeeeeeery slow now.

These might be two different instars of the same species of stinkbug:

Ebony jewelwing. Too far to see the slight resemblance to the antlion.

I think this is a female blue dasher dragonfly. The male of the species is blue; the female is not.

The goldenrod was a hot spot for bugs today, especially honeybees:

And flies, and bumblebees...

Here's some pictures I took on my bug walk yesterday, which was very short:

I don't know what species of leaf hopper these are, but there are a lot of them around lately, and they have been hanging out in groups.

Ailanthus webworm caterpillar. You can just barely see, blurred out in the background, that there was another one in this web.

Some pests:

More of the dreaded spotted lanternfly nymphs. On ailanthus, their favored host plant.

I think this is a potato beetle larva, on the zucchini in our garden. We've had these destroy our entire zucchini plantings before, but there's just a couple on there now, so I don't feel like removing them.

The Promethea caterpillar:

 

Arachnid Appreciation:

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'Tis the season for spined micrathena spiders...

Over the last few years, one of the things I have learned is that spined micrathena spiders like to build their webs at about my face height, right across our paths in the woods. At certain times of day the webs are easy to see, based on the angle of the sunlight, but at other times they are basically invisible. I have walked face-first through a lot of them, but I learned that if you back up when you hit a web you can avoid breaking it, and that is what I have tried to do on those occasions when I don't see the web in time. So, a couple of things happened this year. One, the earliest spined micrathena webs I found were built a bit higher, so I was easily walking under them, which is great, but it sort of made me complacent. Second, I recently bought a head net to keep the bugs out of my eyes and off my face, and it turns out that when you wear the net, A) You really don't see the webs, and B) You don't feel them until it's too late, you've broken the web, and now you have a spider on you. Usually what spined micrathenas do in that situation is rappel down a silk thread to the ground as fast as they can. Which is why this is a picture of a spined micrathena on the ground.

And also why this one was on the ground: