Learning Something New

I read in the paper today that Connecticut is officially in at least a mild drought. Which is funny coming after a whole day of rain, but all we got was a little over a half inch (it rained for real in the evening, after being drizzly all day), which isn't much in a drought. It's nothing to the kind of drought that other parts of the country are having, so I really shouldn't complain. But it's always nice to know that I am not imagining things. It does kind of make me wonder about the long term forecasts for the coming winter to have more than average snowfall. But maybe that's because whatever weather pattern we're in, it always feels like we will always be in that weather pattern, so if we aren't getting precipitation now, we couldn't possibly get precipitation in the winter. But obviously weather patterns do change, because that's how we ended up in a drought in the first place.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I have a huge boulder in my yard, and it is teeming with these tiny bugs. They run all over it - well, actually, come to think of it, they don't run all over it. I really only see them on one end of it. I don't know why they only like that half of it, but it is the sunnier half, so it could be that.

 I don't know what they are, and I don't even know where to look them up in the books. But if I was naming them, I'd call them Gollum bugs, because I think their eyes look like Gollum from the 1970's cartoon of The Hobbit.
(Speaking of bugs that remind me of movies, we watched Krull tonight. It's probably not a good sign when you find yourself yelling at a character onscreen, "Stop smiling! Why are you smiling all of the time?" No, I don't know why I chose that movie tonight. Sometimes you just want to watch a bad movie).

These bugs blend in really well with the rock, so you really only notice them when they are moving. Then when they stop, and you try to take a picture of them, it's hard to find them. Until they start moving again, which they are doing most of the time. Anyway, they blend in so well that I didn't notice there were two bugs here until I looked at the picture on the computer.

I think this bug needs to be zoomed in:

 It's so small that even when I got as close as the macro lens would focus, it was still small in the pictures. Zoomed in you can see that it is kind of fuzzy.

Zoomed in more you get a really good look at those Gollum-y eyes.

Caterpillar Check-in:

 I don't have the words to describe why, but I do think the camouflage looper looks like it has moulted. In all the time I have been seeing it, though, it doesn't look like it has gotten any bigger.

Unlike the saddleback. Yesterday's leaf is gone - not even a stem left - and it's on to the next one. These are leaves on a vine, and there aren't very many left, so I think the saddleback will be riding off into the sunset soon.

The bees are back today. Though I am still not sure if these are bees or wasps:

 Okay, I just looked it up. There are several factors (including nest building and eating habits), but mainly what I read (from the internet, so who knows if it's true) said that bees have a thick body, while wasps taper between the thorax and abdomen (the center and back of the three insect body sections). So this must be a wasp.

Also a wasp.

A couple of hoppers:

I don't get shots from this angle very often.

Stink bugs:

I think this is a sawfly:

These are definitely sawfly larvae:

 It's kind of crowded around here...

A couple of larvae have moved out on their own:

And there's some younger ones together on another leaf:

I couldn't even guess how many generations of sawflies are produced over the course of the summer.

A few Random Bugs:

 

 Moth in the wild.

 For a while there were Japanese beetles all over, but now I rarely see them. This one looks a little bit the worse for wear.

It looks like what happened here is a ladybug crawled into someone's cocoon and got stuck.

For a while today I thought that the blog was going to be nothing but two spiders. Fortunately, I found more than that, eventually, but here are today's spiders in Arachnid Appreciation:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

 This was a tiny web, and it had a line of something down the middle. I assumed that the thing in the center was a spider, but honestly, it was too small for me to tell. Looking at the picture I can see that there is a spider, but I am definitely going to have to go find this one again tomorrow and get a closer shot, and one from the other side of the web.

 Same with this one, minus the line down the center of the web. Unfortunately, it is really challenging to get a clear shot really close up to tiny spiders because the webs move a lot, and it's not like I can brace the camera against it.

I checked up on this spider again today. Still holding onto that packet.