Life Long Learning

Part of my philosophy of life, if I had one, would be that you should try to learn something every day. Or at least keep learning all of your life, as much as you can, about as many subjects as you can. I learned two things today in my backyard. The first thing is that weevils can fly. I probably should have known that, but it took me by surprise when I was about to take a picture of a weevil and it spread its wings that I don't think I knew it had and flew away. I have never seen a weevil fly before. Usually when they don't want their picture taken they just walk around to the other side of whatever they are standing on - leaf, or stem, or whatever - or (and this is a very popular choice), they just let go and drop to the ground. All of which makes me wonder what goes on in those tiny insect brains - if I could fly, and I was in a situation where I had a choice between flying away or dropping several hundred times my body length to the ground, I would fly.

The other thing I learned today is that wearing insect repellent pants won't keep gnats from congregating around your head. In a way that's good news (and pretty much what I expected), because it means I can wear insect repellent pants and not have a problem getting pictures of insects. It's bad news because... well, gnats flying around my head. I can't think of a situation in which that would be desirable. I do hope, though, that the pants are effective in keeping me from getting tick bites. I kind of want to find a tick (and who thought I would ever say THAT?) and put it on the pants to see what it does, but you can never find a tick when you want one (Never thought I'd say that, either).

It rained this morning, all of about 12 drops. The float in the rain gauge didn't even move. We could really use a bit of rain right now.

One other kind of funny thing about the backyard today. The entire time I was outside today there was a bird singing somewhere in the trees, and what it was singing was the first five notes of Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead from the Wizard of Oz. So it was (sans words) "Ding dong the witch is... ding dong, the witch is... ding dong, the witch is..." It was amusing for a while. Then it got annoying, and I wanted to shout, "FINISH THE LINE!" I didn't shout it, but just once, the bird added that last note. It was highly gratifying.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I don't know what species it is, but check out that proboscis! This critter has Hemiptera written all over it.

Handsome, isn't it?

Random Bugs:

 This thing looks kind of different today. It's hard to pinpoint how.

 Assassin and assassinated. It really stinks to be a caterpillar.

 This is a miniscule moth (I knew the name last year, but I have forgotten it, and I don't have time to look it up right now), which unfortunately was on a leaf over my head, so I couldn't get a closer picture of it. I have found them on the screen door in the past, but I think this is the first time I have seen one "in the wild."

 Nice camouflage. It would work better, though, if you were on the ground, or on a tree, and not on the back of a chair.

 The front of the chair isn't any better.

 It looks like a speck of dirt with wings, but I assure you, it's an insect.

 Weevil. Not the one that flew away, but I kept expecting it to.

 Caterpillar.

 The forest tent caterpillars found a new spot to hang out.

 They seem to spend most of their time doing this, which puzzles me, because the prime directive of caterpillars is basically to eat. Collectively these caterpillars appear to eat less than individual caterpillars I have known. But in the time I have been tracking them, only twice have I seen them eating at all, and even then, most of them were walking around on branches, not eating leaves.

 Later I found them walking up a branch in a line.

 From an aesthetic standpoint I am not fond of caterpillars, but I think these are beautiful.

Instead of posting a picture of what the sawfly larvae on the bush out front are up to, I am going to post a video of what they were doing today. Click HERE to see how sawfly larvae, who are also social insects, react to a perceived threat (In this case the perceived threat was me waving my hand at them to get them to react).

Even if you are afraid of spiders, you should check out the adorable spider I found today. Really, it's that cute. Arachnid Appreciation:
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This spider was about the size of the proverbial head of a pin. And not those really big, plastic pin heads, the traditional, tiny, metal ones. The only reason I spotted it on a seed head of grass is because it's bright red. Magnified by the camera, it almost doesn't look like a real spider; it looks like a cartoon spider.

It also appears to have a parasite, which must be incredibly tiny. Probably not visible to the naked eye. I didn't spot it, anyway.

Very long front legs for a jumping spider, at least the ones I see around here.

Spinning a web.