Oh, the Anticipation!

July 6, 2014

There is a certain combined sense of suspense and anti-climax when you find your Backyard Bug of the Day at 12:05 in the morning. Five minutes into the day, and it's Mission: Accomplished, but you can't post about it yet, because you still haven't written the blog for the previous day, and you haven't got a bud yet, and... So you have to wait all day, and you don't need to go on a bug walk, but you want to, but you worry that then you will find something else better, and mess up your whole plan...

Aside from all of that appalling grammar, I think you get the picture. I don't handle waiting very well.

So, with no further ado, Backyard Bug of the Day:

Here are a few more moths from the porch in the wee small hours of the morning:

 Just a small glimpse of what it's like.

I found a moth similar to this last one 'in the wild' today:

I also found this in the yard today:

An acorn stuck in a crack of the bark of a black birch tree. I presume a squirrel stuck it there. In theory I guess we could end up with an oak tree growing out of a black birch.

Backyard Bud of the Day:

Common mullein beginning to bloom:

I found an ever-so-slightly creepy exoskeleton:

And a leaf hopper nymph that looks kind of angry:

Here's another nymph that will be Backyard Bug of the Day if it ever cooperates to have its picture taken:

And a firefly:

I caught glimpses of some very uncooperative bugs:

Greater spangled fritillary butterfly

 Very noisy white dragonfly (that's not its name, that's my description of it. It flew very noisily. Right past my head).

Big news about The Caterpillar!

It moved for the first time in three days! It nibbled a bit at the end of a leaf, and then went back to the hammock. This picture was taken as it was resting on the way back. I didn't actually see the caterpillar in motion.

Now, for Arachnid Appreciation:
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Aside from the spider babies yesterday, spiders have been kind of hard to find in the yard lately. I should go check in the basement hatchway...