Mostly Spiders. But There Are Other Things, Too.

Friday, July 25, 2014

If you like spiders, then today is your day. If you don't like spiders... well, the Backyard Bug of the Day is not a spider, so at least you'll have that.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think this is a spicebush swallowtail. It was feeding on honeysuckle, and what was interesting is that it didn't land on the plant, it just kept hovering while it fed. Which sort of made it hard to take pictures of, and sort of gave me great pictures of how the wings look when they're beating.

I don't really have much to say about that except, hmmm... interesting.

Backyard Bud of the Day is a great deal less interesting. Probably not even worth bothering with, but I took the picture, so here it is:

I'm not even sure there's a bud in there...

There's been a lot of rustling in the bushes lately, mostly because there is fruit to be harvested, so birds are harvesting it, but today the rustling in the flowerbed turned out to be something else:

This chipmunk was unusually blase about the fact that I was standing about 3 feet away taking its picture.

I found two baby grasshoppers:

 From the dullness of it I would guess that this one is soon to moult.

You can't tell from these pictures, but this one is about half again as big as the other.

Bee fashions:

 Pollen pants. (This is my term - not scientific)

I love it when I spot two bugs at once. Can you?

Enough of these six-legged creatures - it's time for Arachnid Appreciation!
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 It looks like the spider's fangs are actually embedded in the tree cricket's head in this shot. (Zoomed in).

 I think this one might be a new one for me...

 I spotted this conglomeration of harvestmen on the side of the house. I suspect an exchange of genetic material is going on.

 That's a lot of legs.

 You can't see the spider here, but what you can see is the web that covers the opening of the box in front of our house for the mail carrier to put packages in. The opening is about 12"x12", and is totally covered by this web. I suspect that even if we'd received a package yesterday, we would not have received a package yesterday, if you know what i mean.

This unfortunate spider is missing a couple of legs.