Tiny Aliens

From a human perspective, bugs are very weird, alien creatures. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the stereotypical image of what aliens from space look like might come from looking at insects here on earth. Have a look at a praying mantis and then think about it. Not that I can show you a praying mantis right now, because I didn't see one today, but when you get a chance. But I digress a bit. The point I want to make is, some bugs are weirder than others. Which brings us to today's Backyard Bug of the Day.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is a Case Bearing Leaf Beetle larva. I have seen them before, in a manner of speaking, which is to say that I have seen their cases stuck tight to leaves, and on occasion the tiniest glimpse of the tip of a leg. This is the first time I have seen one walking around, and the first time I have had a glimpse of one's head. What is weird (and gross) about them is that the case they bear is made out of their own feces. If I recall correctly from when I read about these last year, when the female beetle lays her eggs, she covers them with feces, and then the larvae hatch and use the egg as the beginnings of a case, which they add to with their own feces over time. All I can say is, it's great to be human.

Random Bugs:

 I don't know why I think this is funny, but I do. It's definitely not funny for the aphids, though. If you look carefully you might be able to see that the ladybeetle is already eating an aphid, and there is another aphid on the opposite side of the plant stem from where the ladybeetle is.

 Katydid nymph

 

 The katydid nymph was sharing a leaf with a candy striped leaf hopper.

 No idea what's going on here...

 Hopper nymph

 Color variation of candy striped leaf hoppers

 I sometimes wonder about the moths I see on the front porch, attracted to the porch light at night. I wonder what they do when they are not on the front porch. I found one today that is one of the species I have been seeing on the porch (and my hand) lately.

 Some day I will find out what kind of bug this nymph will grow up to be...

 I don't think I have ever looked at one of these from this viewpoint.

 Stink bug nymph

Some Interesting Insect Interaction:

 I see these tiny flies sometimes, and they are fun to watch because they walk around waving their wings. I don't know what the waving is for, but it reminds me of the workers on the tarmac at airports who wave those paddles to direct planes. I assume that for the insects there is some kind of signal being made this way, either to attract a mate or to claim territory, but I don't know. Anyway, there were a few of them on this branch, which, unfortunately, was a little too high above my head to take good pictures. Here you see the wings raised...

 ... and here the wings are flat.

 Very pretty iridescence.

 Then came the confrontation.

 Wings were waved...

 ... they approached each other...

 There was a scuffle...

 One chased the other away. That certainly seems like a territorial thing, but it could still be a mating thing, and one of the two was not interested.

 I happened to find yesterday's BBotD again. I only found it because I was looking at something on this branch through the lens on the highest magnification, and the larva happened to be within the scope of it. Otherwise I would never have spotted it. This thing is TINY.

Also, somewhat uncooperative.

 Interesting thing about this fly. I see it (or one like it) every once in a while, and almost always in just about the same spot on the same tree.

 And away it goes...

 There is a tree growing through my back porch (much to my delight, and my husband's annoyance, but at the moment he is humoring me. Little does he know that having a tree growing through my porch is sort of a dream come true for me. The only way it could be better is if it was growing through the house, but that would be a little impractical). This tree is fairly attractive to bugs - here's a couple of leaf hoppers and I think a click beetle on a leaf.

 But right now, MOST of the other leaves are covered with ants.

Speaking of things covered with ants, maybe this is too gross, and I shouldn't post it, but here it is - a picture of an earthworm covered in ants.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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I came upon this scene of what I thought were two insects on a leaf, but a closer look showed me it was an insect (a fly) and a spider. The spider was mildly entangled in the web that the spider has woven across the leaf, but it fought its way out.

The spider chased it anyway, but the fly got away.

I think the spider was in a mood of consternation here.

So many spiders are walking around my backyard without the full complement of eight legs.

Orchard orb weaver

In Which I Am Attractive to Lepidoptera

I keep looking for patterns, trying to make connections, and I am drawing a blank. Yesterday there were bugs everywhere. Today... Not so many. The two days were pretty similar. So why the difference?

Here's my Frustrating Bug Story of the Day:
I was walking around, looking for bugs and not really finding anything, when I saw a butterfly land nearby. Butterflies landing are a good sign that maybe I can get a picture of one. So I walked toward where it was, and it flew away. I was still in the same general area, though, when it came back and landed in the same place again... and flew away. I thought perhaps if I stood near there it would come back and land again, and it did. Three times. On my shirt. It's sort of impossible for me to take a picture (at least, in focus) of a butterfly on my own shoulder (I maybe could have gotten it when it was on my stomach, if it hadn't flown away so fast), so I did not get a picture of that butterfly today.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 

 Larva of some kind. This was so tiny I almost didn't even see it. Only the bright red markings drew it to my attention. I don't know what the black blobs are.

 Here's a zoomed-in version of that picture.

Random Bugs:

 Plume moth

 Firefly

 The wood wasps are back to the maple branch, laying more eggs.

 Bumblebee on milkweed

Honeybee on milkweed

I found a curious situation today. I was walking past the bedrock in front of my house, down near the street, and saw a whole lot of big, red ants crawling down the rock. I could see that they then were walking across the grass and into the street. I walked across the street, following the line of ants, and saw that they went up the curb, across the grass strip by the curb, across the sidewalk, and into my across-the-street neighbor's lawn. I walked back to my own yard, and tried to see where the ants were coming from, but the line went into some brush where I couldn't get at them. Within only a few minutes (during which I was trying to take a picture of a different bug) the line diminished. When I went back about 15 minutes later, all the ants were gone.

With so many ants you would think I could get a picture of more than one at a time, but nope. I couldn't. I barely got any pictures at all - the ants were moving fast.

Beetle

Ladybeetle

 

 Robber fly

The gypsy moth caterpillar scourge is coming to an end for this year. As icky as it has been in my backyard, with so many of the caterpillars around, and frass everywhere, raining down from the trees, it has been much, much worse in other areas of this state and neighboring states, where acres of trees have been completely stripped of their leaves. Unfortunately, it is not coming to an end because something has killed off the invasive caterpillars, but because they are moving on to the next stage in their development: pupation:

 

  I found this caterpillar in the crevice of a tree trunk. Its body has shortened and thickened, and it has strands of silk woven around it.

Elsewhere in the backyard I found a leaf stuck oddly to a tree trunk, and when I peeled it back I found this gypsy moth chrysalis. Next to it is the shed skin from its final molt.

And on a rock, another caterpillar just beginning the process, while about a foot away...

... two chrysalides huddled together, anchored to the rock with silk. There is another gypsy moth caterpillar beside them that looks like it is an earlier instar. I didn't notice this at the time, or I would have taken a better picture of it, but if you look to the left of the smaller caterpillar there is what looks like possibly a beetle larva on the rock.

I absconded with the three chrysalides, in part because I want to observe them, and in part because I just don't want the moths to go out in the world and reproduce. I read somewhere that you can tell the sex of the eventual moth by looking at the chrysalis, but these all look basically the same to me, so I don't know which sex they are - it is a matter of comparing the size of the chrysalis, because the females (I think) are bigger. But when they are all about the same size, I don't know if these are bigger or smaller.

Interesting note, which I already knew about chrysalides, but still think is weird - they can wiggle.

We got home late this evening from the fireworks, and found a lot of moths had been attracted to the porch light again. Many of them were the same kinds from the other night, but there were a few new ones:

 I think this is a species of geometer moth.

 For a second I thought this was a moth on top of another moth, because that is what the wings look like.

 This moth landed on my hand and did not want to leave.

 Seeing those antennae sticking up like that was an unusual sight.

There were other insects besides moths, of course:

 Fish fly

Hopper

Caterpillar Update:

Still changing - now almost all of the brown has changed to green.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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I didn't get a good picture of this spider, because it moved too fast, but I thought it was interesting because...

... it had only one leg on the left side, and...

... it marched right over a bunch of aphids and didn't seem to care about all that potential food. I wonder if spiders are particular at all, or if any of them are specialists in what they eat. Or if a spider is a web builder, accustomed to catching its food that way, will it ignore potential prey like these aphids because they are not in a web. Or is it possible that it didn't evens see them - many spiders have poor eyesight, relying on web vibrations to catch prey.