Trio

 It's cool when you get a real-life demonstration of something you have learned by being told. Like when you are told that thorns are a plant's defense mechanism, and then you get stabbed in the thumb by a thorn when you are trying to break off a leaf. I am not sure that's exactly how it's supposed to work, but my thumb hurts A LOT, so that plant is pretty safe from me right now.

First, a bit of comedy. Or at least something that struck me as funny:

Why is that so funny? Well, it's kind of a classic comedy thing. On the bottom leaf is an assassin bug, presumably looking for another bug to eat, and just over its head is another bug that it doesn't see. We, the audience, know that the beetle is there, but the assassin bug doesn't know that it is being outwitted. Never mind, maybe it's just me.

Anyway, that bug on the top leaf is one of three, yes THREE Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day. We're getting toward the end of bug season, and bugs are getting hard to find, so since I have three candidates today, and no guarantee that there will be another chance for any of them, we have three winners.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 This is a beetle of some kind, but I couldn't figure out what kind from my books. There are a lot of beetles that it sort of looks like, but none of the pictures looked exactly like this, so I am just going to have to leave it as "This is a beetle."

 Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 I thought this was a ladybug at first, but it doesn't exactly look like one, because the shape is different, so I looked it up in one of my books. I did manage to find it in one of the books, and while it is a species often confused with ladybugs, it is not a ladybug. I can tell you what it is, but you won't believe me.

 It's a species of Handsome Fungus Beetle (I am not making this up) called Endomychus biguttatus (I am not making this up).

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day#3:

 This actually may have been BBotD earlier in the summer, but I don't think it has; I think that I got decent pictures of it a bunch of times, but each time I found another bug I preferred to make BBotD. And then I didn't see any for a while. So, since this may be its last chance, today it gets to be a Backyard Bug of the Day. It may be disappointing to the bug to have been passed over a bunch of times, and then have to share the title, but then again, it is possible (and I don't feel like looking it up, because I am behind schedule tonight) that it has already been honored this summer, in which case it is probably feeling pretty smug. But that's just me anthropomorphizing, as I like to do.

I think it's a species of stink bug. It's small, but it has wings, so it's an adult.

Instead of flowers, there are now a lot of seeds in the backyard:

 Which got me thinking. Flowers provide food for bees. With the dwindling number of flowers blooming, there wouldn't seem to be much for the bees to eat anymore. And then I saw this:

 This tiny wasp is on a goldenrod plant that has gone to seed. Presuming that this wasp also eats nectar, I can't help but wonder what it is getting from this plant. Or if it is looking for something but not finding it. It certainly made a strong effort.

However, the flowers aren't completely done yet:

 So this dark green wasp (I think) has plenty of nectar available to her.

Today I even found a Backyard Bud of the Day:

 I know it's a repeat, but morning glories are all I have left.

I found this interesting caterpillar today:

 It looks like a White Hickory Tussock Moth caterpillar that has lost most of its hair. I think that is what it is, in fact.

 It sort of looks like a spinal cord.

 It has retained the stinging hairs (if I am right that it is the long, black ones that sting).

 Later I went back to look at it and it had changed its posture, arching its back end up.

 You can just see that in addition to the pair of prolegs at the end, at least one of the middle set of prolegs are lifted up. Later I went back and looked again (but didn't have my camera with me), and it looked as though it had shrunk, as in, compacted itself and made itself shorter. I also noticed, because it was almost dark and I was using a flashlight, that there was a silk thread going from a hair near the caterpillar's head up the trunk of the tree a short way. Could be a spider put it there, but caterpillars make silk, too, and it comes from their mouth region.

I have two guesses about what's going on. One, that it is unwell for some reason, and dying. The other, obviously, is that it could be getting ready to pupate. I tried to look up WHTMC pupation, but basically, if you are not one of the glamorous Lepidoptera, like monarch caterpillars or Luna moths, nobody is posting information about how you pupate on the internet. So... I'll look for it again tomorrow, and see if anything has happened.

Today was definitely the day for seeing WHTMCs. These two were neighbors in a tangled mass of vines and whatnot that has gotten out of control:

I got video of a third one, on the march looking for food, I assume. Click HERE to watch.

These little loopers are sort of ubiquitous lately:

Random Bugs:

 Actually, I don't know what this is. It has certain bug-like qualities, but it doesn't really look like a bug...

 ... Even up close.

 Amazing design on a leafhopper.

 I haven't seen one of these in ages.

 Moth in the wild.

 Small milkweed bug.

Backyard Bug Behavior:

There are people, I am sure, who can identify what bird a stray feather came from. I am not one of them.

I am going to guess Yellow Shafted Flicker...

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I posted pictures of this kind of spider last week, but for some reason I didn't look up what kind it was until after I wrote that day's blog, and when I did look it up, I realized that I had told the story of what I thought when I saw it incorrectly. I mentioned that at first I thought it was a spider pulling another bug, but actually, what I thought when I first spotted it, was that it was an ant. This is a really small spider, about the size of one of the smaller species of ants I see in the yard. So I thought it was an ant, then I looked through the camera and thought it was a spider pulling another bug. Then when I saw it on the computer, bigger than it looked in real life or through the camera, I realized it was just an unusual spider.

So what is it called? It is an Ant Mimic Spider. That is a perfect name for it. If you just see it walking around, you don't notice that it has two body segments and eight legs like a spider, instead of three body segments and six legs like an ant. You just see the general shape, and that elongated body definitely looks like an ant at first. I don't know why that particular morphology is useful for a spider, but it must be, because it exists.