Quotable Dragons.

I am quickly re-reading a book - The Last Dragonslayer, by Jasper Fforde - because the next book in the series has just come out and I am going to a book signing tomorrow, and I just read the following passage:

"You know," he* went on, after lapsing into silence for a few moments, "if someone asked me to sum up all complex life on Earth in two words, do you know what I'd say?"

I shook my head.

"Mainly insects."

*He is Maltcassion, the Dragon.

The dragon sums it up quite nicely. Insects make up most of the biomass on earth, complex or otherwise. Or maybe it's just the animal biomass, I forget. (Never trust statistics you read on the internet!). More than most people, I am quite aware of how many insects are around us. I am not bragging, I just spend more time observing insects than most people - look at what I do for fun every day! That being said, insects have been scarce lately. I know you think I am nuts for saying that, because I am still posting a ton of pictures every day, but trust me, those bugs are getting hard to find, and I am not finding as many of each kind as I was even a week ago. But today, before I went outside, I stood looking out a second floor window, just to have that view of my patch of earth, and noticed a lot of bugs flying around. It was a good view of them, because they were basically at my eye level, but they weren't close to me, and were moving fast, so I couldn't tell what they were (Not butterflies, obviously). Some of them looked like they were probably bees, though. The flying bugs were often dodging falling leaves (sigh), but there were a lot of them in the air. I figured this was a good sign. It was not as warm today as the last couple of days, but I thought I'd go outside and it would be like it was all summer, bugs everywhere. Well, I went out and I think it took me at least ten minutes to find any bug at all. (Bugs flying at the level of the second floor of the house are of no use in macro photography). I couldn't find bees, or beetles, or anything. It was pretty weird - the last two years I have been able to find bugs up into mid-November - not a lot of them, but they are around then. I wouldn't expect it to be so hard to find something in ten minutes of looking in the first third of October. I was out for nearly an hour, I think, and it wasn't until I was just about to go into the house that I found a Backyard Bug of the Day.

Here it is - Backyard Bug of the Day:

Some kind of fly.

Now for the musical portion of the blog! Feel free to sing along:

 The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah, the ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah. The ants go marching one by one, the little one stops to suck his thumb and they all go marching down into the ground, and out the other way (Or in this case, up a tree...)

 The ants go marching two by two hurrah, hurrah...

The ants go marching three by three, hurrah, hurrah!

Okay, that's all I've got. All of the ants I saw today marched by ones, twos or threes. A lot of them went up that branch. I wonder what's  up there.

If you are like me, and you prefer spring to autumn, because you'd rather see things coming to life than going into dormancy, a daily examination of the plants in the yard is a somewhat melancholy exercise. Good thing the plants are still interesting when they go to seed:

 Balloon flower

 All of my efforts to find out what this plant is have failed. I still think it might be some kind of lilac.

 I know what these are - cedar berries.

There are still some summer hold outs.

Random Bugs - because there are still some, even if they are hard to find:

 Not-a-checkered beetle. (20-spotted ladybug).

 This happened a lot today. This happened a lot this week, actually. No good shot, and then the bug flies away.

 Still finding the occasional Japanese beetle.

 This assassin bug has brighter markings than most.

 When they feel threatened they lift their front legs over their backs.

 Consider this zoomed-in picture a preview of a bug that I hope will be a BBotD soon (I posted pics of one yesterday. In past years they have been somewhat ubiquitous around this time).

 The saddleback has gotten really big compared to what it looked like when I first found it... I don't remember when that was, but it was weeks ago. I suspect it will be disappearing soon.

Egg mass or cocoon?

Yes, thank you, that's very cooperative.

Yep, that's all I've got. I told you there weren't many bugs today.

I found one spider that was doing a very interesting thing today, which makes up for the fact that I didn't find a lot of spiders, either. Arachnid Appreciation:
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 So, why am I posting a picture that is so completely out of focus? Because the reason it is out of focus is interesting. It's not because of the wind, or because I couldn't keep the camera steady. It's because the spider suddenly started violently shaking the web! I don't know how exactly it was doing it (I can guess the why was because I got so close, but it could have had another reason), but it shook the web like crazy for a few seconds. Then it calmed down and let me take its picture.

 Here's what it looks like when it's calm.

 I think this is the same kind of spider. Hard to tell, though, from the angle.