Sound and Silence

Today I accidentally squished a small caterpillar on my neck. I realize that this was much worse for the caterpillar than it was for me, but it was still pretty unpleasant for me.

Some weirdness among the animals in the backyard today: There was a squabble between three bluejays among the trees where I was standing at one point. Normally bluejays are pretty rudely squawkish, but these three were silent as they chased each other among the branches. It was eerie.

Also eerie was the howling/barking/caterwauling/whatever-that-noise-was that came from the woods both this afternoon and this evening. My guess - and I have nothing to back this up - is that a coyote has had babies in there somewhere, and they aren't all getting along, either with each other or some other animal. That part of the woods has a thick understory, so even in the afternoon I couldn't see what was going on - and I wasn't about to delve to far into the woods to investigate.

Today the robins were much less tolerant of my presence in front of the house than they were yesterday. When I appeared the mother (I assume) was sitting in a tree, and she made her distress cry. Then the male came flying over and the two of them set about squawking. The funny thing about all of this histrionic hullabaloo is that I only know what all of this means because I looked it up, and because I know that the nest is there on the porch. I don't really see how this behavior would be effective with most humans, especially if they don't know there's a nest nearby. In fact, knowing what their behavior means would actually alert me to the presence of a nearby nest if I didn't know one was there - it happened last year. There was an area down by the street last summer that I couldn't walk by without a pair of robins setting up a ruckus. I couldn't see the nest, because it was hidden by leaves, and I wasn't about to upset them further by poking around to find it (I spotted it in the fall when the leaves fell), but I knew it was there because of the way they were acting.

I found this on the floor of the porch:

I also took a quick peek into the nest, and it is definite that there are only two babies in there. I don't know if the third just didn't hatch, or if something happened to it.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is a leaf beetle. I know that sounds terribly generic, and it is - there are thousands of species of leaf beetles, according to one website where I looked for information about this insect. Only one of my field guides included this, and it was on a page with a bunch of other leaf beetles, but they all had more specific names - elm leaf beetle, waterlily leaf beetle, long-horned leaf beetle, ten-spotted leaf beetle. This one was just Leaf Beetle. It eats goldenrod leaves. It's scientific name is Ophraella conferta, but even looking that up on the internet didn't give me any new information (though one site classified it as being confident, whatever that means when you are talking about beetles). I want to know why its elytra don't cover its abdomen, and if this is a female about to lay eggs. No such luck finding that information. But, I know it's confident.

Backyard Bug Behavior:

 When I spotted this beetle hanging from under a leaf I assumed it was in the clutches of a spider or assassin bug, because I see that sometimes.

 Naturally I had a look, wanting to see the supposed spider, and found out that that was not the case.

Random Bugs:

 Another weevil. If I was truly organized and scientifically minded, I would be keeping track of the species I find...

 Caterpillar on a tree trunk - it's a backyard meme.

 This one is doomed - it seems to have a parasite egg on it.

 Yesterday's BBotD was still on its same tree, but in a different crevice.

 I know, blurry, but this is the only shot I got! Tiny katydid, I think.

I have almost as many spiders today as I do Random Bugs. Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I can still see you.

 I think this is a jumping spider. A less fuzzy jumping spider.

 And a really tiny jumping spider. I should be keeping track of jumping spider species, too...

 Here's the above picture zoomed in.

 And here's that spider after it jumped somewhere else.

 I rarely get a glimpse of this side of this species of spider because they often build a web that is parallel to the ground and then hang out on the underside of it. So this was a nice opportunity.

 It's such a beautiful spider.

 Building a web...