Crick, Crick, Crickety Crick

The Cricket Chorus performed with great gusto last night, heralding a gorgeous day. I stepped outside confident that there would be bugs galore in the backyard today.

I was wrong again. Granted, I saw some bugs I have not seen lately, but it was still hard to find bugs, and there weren't many around. I guess it is because it is not the temperature that brings bugs around, but the availability of things like food. With few flowers left, and the leaves all dying, there's not a lot to eat. I kind of makes me wonder why there are still any bugs at all. Especially aphids. Why are there still so many aphids? Well, there's still plenty of food for bugs that eat aphids (and that is a lot of bugs, actually).

By the way, it was in the 70s today, and people are talking about snow for the weekend. I am hoping they are wrong...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 A hopper! I think this one might be a frog hopper. I also think this is one I have not seen before, because that face is really unfamiliar.

 It's on the side of the house, which, as I will show you, was a really popular place for bugs today.

 I don't know why the color of my house looks different in different pictures. There is obviously something about my camera that I don't understand...

It almost has a pink look to it...

Other Bugs on the House:

 Brown marmorated stinkbug

 Ladybug larva

 Ladybug

 Wasp. It was carrying something in its mandibles, but I couldn't see what. I didn't like that it looked like it was trying to insert it into the siding of the house.

 Really uncooperative bug

This one is a porch light bug - a really small cadisfly. It's not a good picture, because of where it was, but at least now you know it was there.

Speaking of houses...

At one point during the summer whenever I walked by a certain part of the yard a pair of robins would get really agitated and start scolding me to go away. It was obvious that they had a nest they were protecting, and I did try not to linger in the area, but hey, it's my yard. I can walk by if I want. I could never see the nest, although I didn't try very hard to find it, because I didn't want to annoy the parents that much. Well, now that the leaves are gone I know where the nest is. It is much lower than I would have thought. I see that like the nest that was built in the cedar tree in the back, it is made in part with shredded paper from our compost pile. I wonder if it was built by the same robins (who gave up on that nest when their eggs were taken by a predator), or if it's just a popular building material for robins.

Inedible Fruits:

 Crab apple. Actually, I guess those are edible, but not really worth the trouble.

A species of nightshade called horsenettle. Related to the tomato, but poisonous.

Here's a picture that make it look like I am really bad at insect photography:

No, I was not trying to take a picture of the ladybug in the upper right corner. I was trying to take a picture of that tiny wasp-ish thing that flew away just as I was pressing the shutter. Mostly I think I am a pretty good insect photographer, if I may say so myself.

Random Bugs:

 Yup, if you're an aphid, everyone wants to eat you. This one was stuck on a spider thread, but it was still alive, and I didn't see the spider around, so maybe it got free. There's another aphid on the branch.

 The case moth caterpillars in the yard have gotten noticeably bigger. Not that you can tell from the picture, probably, but just trust me on this. They are still tiny, though.

 A cocoon?

 Here's what I was so happy to see - a wasp-or-maybe-a-bee (I am still confused by a lifetime of conditioning to think flower pollinator = bee) on one of the few remaining asters. I haven't seen wasps and bees lately, and weird as this sounds, I have missed them. I saw a lot of wasps today, and of several species (most of which I did not get pictures of).

 And then look what happened! Another wasp landed on the same flower!

 Weirdly, even as small as the flower was, neither appeared to force the other off.

So here's another one of the pulsating, clear, slug/caterpillar things (I really don't think this is a caterpillar). It definitely appears that the end I thought was the back is the 'head' end. And it has a few dead aphids there...

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Sometimes when I am watching (and trying to photograph) spiders I will see them zip along their threads so fast that I can't even see how they are moving. They are just suddenly at the other end of the thread. I would love to see a really slo-mo video of what they are doing, because at the moment it just looks like teleportation.