The Bugs in the Backyard: Smile for the Camera!

There are a lot of times when I am looking at a bug, and everything is fine and dandy, but the second I lift up the camera the bug says, "NO WAY!" and flees the scene. I find this annoying, of course, and I don't get pictures of a lot of cool bugs because of this. I used to think that maybe the bugs would see the camera as a giant eye, and that freaked them out, but I recently saw a documentary about leopard seals in which an underwater camera man was filming the seals, which are really dangerous animals, and one of the seals apparently decided that he was a helpless animal and terrible hunter, and kept bringing him dead penguins to eat. The seal kept thrusting the penguins at the camera lens, which made the camera man think that the seal thought that the camera lens was his open mouth. It is, of course, only speculation to determine what an animal is thinking, and it's not like bugs have huge brains, but maybe they see the camera lens as a giant open mouth to eat them?

Of course, insect vision is not like human vision, so it is difficult to know how they are perceiving anything at all. Certainly they don't have the best understanding of human anatomy - unless they plan to bite you, they don't really need to know much at all, and even then they just need to find a soft part, which is most of the human body. A lot of insects can only see contrast between light and dark, and I think some of them do have vision that is motion based. So I guess my point is, it is really annoying when I want to take a picture and the bugs flee, but I don't know why they do that.

Of course maybe they are just like me, and don't like to have their pictures taken.

There are Co-Bugs of the Day again today, because I am being wishy-washy.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

I know what you're thinking - that this has already been Backyard Bug of the Day, and recently, too. But that's where you're wrong.

This was Backyard Bug of the Day recently, Acanalonia bivittata.

This is Acanalonia conica. (Yes, I just looked that up. I knew this was a different species, but I didn't know the names. Anyway, something amusing happened when I took this planthopper's picture. See the first shot above? That was a different planthopper, lower down on the same branch. I took its picture first, and then took this one.

And then, this happened:

It's hard to take pictures when you are trying not to giggle.

Ah, insect comedy. It's the best.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Caterpillar.

This caterpillar had an interesting way of moving, but I didn't get a good shot of it. It's not an inchworm, but it humped up in the middle a lot like one. It was weird - you had to see it, but trust me on this. And of course, when I wanted to take a good picture, it stopped moving.

Backyard Bud of the Day:

I probably posted a bud from this tree back in the spring, but, well, I am posting another one today. This tree in particular I have noticed gets its buds for the next spring in the fall. I like its sense of optimism.

Speaking of bud re-runs:

I featured this plant as Bud of the Day ages ago, and it looks like it is finally about to bloom!

And then there are some plants that are into the seed stage:

And it looks like the deer didn't get all of the pokeweed!

Probably because this plant is about 8 feet tall. I have never seen pokeweed so tall.

Such an aesthetically appealing plant.

Butterfly:

It would appear to be a female eastern tailed-blue...

... from what little I can see of the dorsal side of the wings. The female is mostly brown on the dorsal side, while the male is iridescent blue.

Nice proboscis. (This is a zoomed-in photo. I did not get this close).

By the way, I did not know the name of that butterfly, I had to look it up. In order to do so I went to my bookshelf of field guides to get the woefully inadequate butterfly book I have (it took several books and the internet to come up with the identification), and discovered that I had another insect field guide that I had forgotten about. I also realized that I have a LOT of field guides, on many, many subjects, and it seems to me that anyone with that many field guides should know a lot more about a lot of things...

And while we are in the mood for Lepidoptera, here's some Moths in the Wild:

Trying to blend in...

Hiding...

Really trying to blend in...

I don't care who sees me, I am gorgeous! (The picture doesn't really do it justice. It was really a beautiful, pearlescent white, with a gold band).

Nature discards a lot of things:

Exoskeletons...

Cocoons...

Feathers...

And don't get me started on leaves. I am in denial about that.

Forget thoughts of autumn (especially since summer finally arrived this wee). Let's look at random pictures of bugs!

Young ambush bug with impressive skills:

It has turned yellow, but still is far from what it will look like when it has grown up. It apparently has some grown-up ambushing abilities, though.

This is an awesome bug with an awesome name - buffalo tree hopper. If I ever get a decent picture of it, it will be BBotD...

Ooh, blue wings...

Lace bug.

Katydid.

I have a lot of pictures of spiders and related things - specifically spider webs - for Arachnid Appreciation:
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Another word about field guides. It is probably pretty obvious that most of the time when I find bugs I don't bother to look them up, and though part of that is because I am lazy, mostly it is because all of the field guides I have (and I have several), are woefully incomplete. Sure, they claim to be comprehensive lists of all the insects (and spiders, in some cases) in North America, but none of them even have a good selection of the bugs in my backyard. So, I don't bother with them all that much. My usual guide, I realized today, shows only 11 species of spiders. Now, it is an insect guide, and spiders are not insects, but still. Last week I found 16 species of spiders in my backyard, and this book only has 11? And two of them are species that are not found in this part of the country? None of my field guides show the big orb weavers in the backyard - trust me, I have tried to look them up - and one of the books is a Field Guide to Insects and Spiders. Anyway, I sometimes flip through the books just to see what might catch my eye, and I happened to notice yesterday that the above web is in the book - which is unusual, because it doesn't usually show the webs. I don't usually take pictures of this particular web because it is hard to photograph, but the lighting was good for it today, so I did. Anyway, the reason I tried to get pictures of it today was because I saw the name of this spider in my book, and thought it was awesome - it is a Bowl-and-doily spider. Now, I would have gone with Bag-and-doily, because I think it looks more like a bag than a bowl, but as usual, no one asked me.

Here's another Bowl-and-doily spider web.

And here is the Bowl-and-doily spider. I posted a picture of it recently and said that I seldom take pictures of it because I don't usually get a good view, and in that case I posted a side view. Well, since this spider was in a web in a tree, above my head, I actually got a look at the dorsal view!

And isn't that web amazing?

It caught a lace bug...