A Living Rainbow

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Today I saw an entire rainbow's worth of bugs. I saw a wasp-like bug with a red abdomen. I saw a ladybug and a scorpion fly that were orange. I saw yellow hornets and a yellow butterfly. I saw a green dragonfly, and a blue damselfly, and I saw a wasp with purple wings. I didn't see anything indigo, but I did round out the colors with black, white, and brown. Nature is full of wondrous variety, and nowhere can you see that better than with bugs.

Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of all of those, but some day I hope to be able to post a full bug rainbow.

But I will post the blue. Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I'm confused by this bug, because of the way it holds its wings. It doesn't hold them out like a dragonfly, but they are not folded back like a damselfly. All of which just proves that I know nothing. Nature is very humbling.

Fabulous eyes.

Backyard Bud of the Day:

Want to see some weirdness?

 Here's some weirdness. The blob. On an oak leaf. You probably can't tell how small this is, but it's about a quarter of an inch long.

I thought it was a caterpillar at first, but it has too many prolegs. You can see the food it has eaten making its way through its digestive system. And an eye is visible at the front.

A few more weird things:

 Weird, but adorable. I love these little hoppers (leaf? tree? plant? Still not clear on that).

 Another one - this one just a nymph. Gotta love those eyes.

And speaking of eyes...

 This massive beetle (at least 2 inches long, which is huge by non-rainforest standards, as far as I am concerned) came for a visit on the window screen tonight.

 I focused in close enough to see that it seems to have downward facing eyes.

And they look like window screens.

The last bit of weirdness I have for you involved Backyard Bug Behavior of the Day:

 The wasps are still there on the ground, and I am still wondering if they built that nest there on purpose. It is on a raised lump of bare ground, which I don't recall being there before (though I may not have noticed it if it was), and they are still coming and going. There are a LOT of them, but today they seemed less agitated.

 However, I did spot this wasp in the grass a short way away from the nest, dragging this larva. Stealing it? Moving it elsewhere because the nest did fall from somewhere, and the wasps are just there moving stuff away? I don't know.

The problem is, people don't like wasps, or hornets, or whatever these are, so when you try to do a search on the internet to find out if there are wasps or hornets that build a paper nest on the ground, all you find are a few million articles on how to kill them. I am not looking for information on how to kill them, I want to know about them, and their weird behavior.

Okay, that's all the weird stuff for today. Now for some completely normal bugs:

 Moth in the wild.

 Beetle.

 No, the picture is not sideways. The butterfly is.

So many aphids...

Suddenly there seems to be a lot of flowers in the backyard:

 The balloon flowers have never bloomed so well.

Backyard Bird of the Day:

 Obviously the macro lens is not ideal for taking pictures of birds from half way across the yard, but if I'd had the telephoto on the camera I never would have gotten this shot, because I'd have still been focusing. Anyway, nice action shot!

 And when it's zoomed in to the point of pixelation, you can see that we are not the only ones who have been harvesting raspberries!

I found a gorgeous spider today that even an arachnophobe would have to admit is beautiful... as they run screaming the other way....

Arachnid Appreciation:
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