The Bugs in the Backyard: An Inquiring Mind

I probably ask as many questions in a day as the average three year old. Fortunately for the rest of the world, I only ask most of them inside my own head. Unfortunately for my husband, most of the ones I ask out loud I ask to him. A lot of my questions are science based, and because he majored in science in college, and is a science teacher, I assume he knows everything about every branch of science. It turns out that a major in molecular and cell biology, and a minor in chemistry don't qualify you to answer every single question about everything sciency. No matter, I ask anyway. Because I wonder about things.

Like this:

This was on the storm door late last night. I turned on the back porch light to look outside and there was a swarm of tiny bugs flying around. I didn't want any of them to come in, so I didn't open the door and go outside, but a few landed on the door. I think this is a tiny leafhopper, but I only saw it from this angle so I don't know. What I am curious about, though, is all those little hairs on its belly. What is their function?

Next question: Why is this caterpillar standing straight up?!?

It stood like this for a while. I have no idea why. I have to say that I think it destroys the bird poop illusion a little bit.

At least we finally get a look at its face. Maybe it thinks it is a cobra... It ate a good amount today, so that is good. I can't believe I worry about things like this...

Backyard Bud of the Day:

Note: I was working on the blog and the site froze up and I lost everything that came after this that I had written so far. I am feeling kind of discouraged, because loading pictures here takes forever, so I have lost about an hour of work. So now... you're going to get the less witty version. And if you already think I have no wit in my writing, then I guess there will be a wit deficit. As for the bud, I believe I wrote before that it is difficult to find buds lately, because so much has already bloomed and leafed out, but I sometimes have a cheater way of finding them by spotting flowers that I had not noticed before, and knowing there are probably buds nearby. That is what happened with this black eyed Susan - I saw the flower yesterday, so I knew today there would be buds.

Anyway, short version of the following: There are three Backyard Bugs of the Day today, because I can't decide between the pretty one, the one I have never seen before, and the weird one.

Backyard Bug of the Day #1:

Here's the pretty one - a butterfly with blue accents. (I should know what it's called, but I don't, and I am too annoyed right now to get the bug book, which is not terribly comprehensive about butterflies anyway).

It was semi-cooperative, showing me both sides of its wings.

Backyard Bug of the Day #2:

Here's the weird: this piece of lint with legs (and wings) is a wooly aphid.

None of these are stellar pictures, because it was quite active, but you get the idea.

I can't help but wonder how well the wings work with all that fluff surrounding them.

Backyard Bug of the Day #3:

I am not sure if this is a beetle or a wasp, but I am thinking beetle. At any rate, I have never seen one before, which is pretty noteworthy for my third summer doing this. I didn't get any great pictures, but this one is okay. However, that leads me to the next thing...

Backyard Missed Shot of the Day:

It's amazing how often I just miss the cool shot of a bug with its wings spread to fly. I get this kind of shot fairly often, though. Or a shot of an empty leaf.

Some interesting Backyard Bug Behavior today:

This ladybug-ish (I assume it is a species of ladybug) bug was sitting on a stem eating an aphid.

An ant came along. If you've been reading my blog, you know the deal with ants, aphids, and predators.

However, after examining the situation, the ant left.

But then the ant (or another ant?) came back in a very aggressive posture, and there was a bit of a scuffle - it looks to me like the ant has the aphid's wing in its mandibles.

But I think by then the ladybug had eaten most of the aphid anyway, and the ant went away. I felt kind of sad for it - and the aphid, but that is silly. This is life in the wild. It's a bug eat bug world.

I found two more eggs today:

This one was on a milkweed leaf, but is not a monarch egg.

There were a couple of these hanging from trees. I assume they are eggs of some kind.

A cooperative skipper:

A floral interlude, after all these bugs and all this drama:

The lavender is in full bloom.

This is what I have in front of my house where a lawn is "supposed to" be.

Okay, after this I am done with the grass flowers, I promise.

Now, I've got some more REALLY interesting Backyard Bug Behavior, but it's spiders, so it will be in Arachnid Appreciation. There's video, too! And it's not at all scary, I don't think, but use your own spider sense to decide if you want to go on from here... Though come to think of it, the second spider I am featuring is pretty creepy.
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Arachnid Appreciation!

I came across an interesting scene on a milkweed leaf:

In the upper right of the picture you see an out of focus something which is a female spider holding an ant. As I came upon the scene, she was on the top of the leaf, and scurried over the edge (I think because I approached). On the leaf was another spider, which I believe to be the male of the species, acting strangely, waving its front legs around. At first I thought this was aggression, but the female came back to the top of the leaf, and I realized the male was courting her.

The female with the ant. Whenever any other bug (or I) got too close, one or both of the spiders would scurry to the back side of the leaf. On one occasion, when a hoverfly buzzed them, the female ran to the tip of the leaf, dropped her ant, and scurried to the back. Then she peeked over, grabber her ant, and climbed back up.

This went on for a while, and I left this plant to look at other nearby bugs. Eventually they moved to the stem of the plant.

I am pretty sure that the female couldn't even see him at this point. Spiders don't have the best eyesight anyway. At any rate, I have no idea if they ended up mating or not; later when I came back the male was there alone.

Here's a video of the dance:
Click Here to Watch the Spider Mating Dance.
For spiders there is a certain element of "Please, don't eat me!" in the male's courtship behavior (and sometimes they get eaten, and not just among black widows). So the mating rituals are meant to convince the female to mate but not devour the male.

I then noticed that the exact same ritual was taking place with other spider pairs all over the patch of milkweed. I did not notice any successful (or violent) endings, however. Maybe soon there will be a lot of baby spiders there.

Another male's dance moves.

Later I found this male.

Love the purple at the end of the abdomen! He was eating a smaller insect.

Remember the weird spiders from yesterday? I was wrong about them - they were not the kind of spider I thought they were. The one I thought they were has a really big abdomen, but the ones from yesterday were basically flat: