The Bugs in the Backyard: Rain, Rain, Went Away...

I thought I was going to get a day off today. The forecast was for rain, rain, rain, but the reality was that it stopped raining by about 11 in the morning. I went out for my bug walk shortly after, because I had afternoon plans, but most of the bugs didn't come out at that time. I don't blame them - the humidity was grotesque - do you know how hard it is to focus a camera when the viewfinder is fogged up? The sun came out right before we went out in the afternoon. Oh well. I still got some excellent bugs to show you.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Sometimes it's not just me watching the bugs.

I am pretty sure this is a cabbage white - the garden enemy. Or at least the enemy of the Brussels sprouts. But when it's not in the garden, I like it. At first I thought it was a sulphur, but I confirmed with a book, that it's probably the cabbage white.

It was really cooperative.

Really, really cooperative.

At least, it was cooperative after some initial standoffishness. This picture was actually taken before the others, in a different spot. It flew to a couple of different spots before it decided I was okay, and it would let me get close. Or maybe it just wanted to see me wade into thigh-high wet plants. Anyway, I included this picture in spite of it not being as good as the others because if you look closely you can see that there are drops of water on its wings.

Now, I know at this point you think that I am only really looking for bugs on the milkweed plants, but that is not true. I look everywhere, I just find a lot of bugs on the milkweed plants. Part of that is just because there are quite a few bugs that are milkweed related - large milkweed bug, small milkweed bug, red milkweed beetle, monarch butterfly caterpillars (which I haven't seen in a couple of years), and some other caterpillar with milkweed in its name. Also, the milkweed is in bloom, so naturally that will be attractive to a lot of things.

On that note, and to prove a point, time for Who's On the Milkweed Today?

There are four bugs in this picture. You'll have to look at it full-screen to see them all. They are not all in good focus. And I should mention that when I took the picture, I only saw one, but that is not unusual, when I am focusing on focusing on a particular bug.

Here's a better picture of the main bug in question.

Assassin dangling oddly, with raindrops

Admittedly, some bugs just seem to land on the milkweed for a place to land. It has nice, big leaves for landing on.

Small milkweed bug. I realized today after seeing so many large milkweed bugs lately that this one is smaller. It also has different markings - note the black heart.

As I recall this is a white spotted black.

One interesting thing about the milkweed this year: there is a lot of it. Last year there wasn't very much of it in my yard, after years of it being pretty abundant. This year it is not up to the same level of abundance, but there is a lot more than last year, and it's growing in different parts of the yard. There are a few other plants - I have mentioned common mullein, but there are others too - that didn't do well last year, but are thriving this year. It's surprising with the lack of rain in the last couple of months. Maybe they enjoyed our horrible winter.

Not all of the bugs are on the milkweed, though today I found more of them on the milkweed than on other plants. Random Bugs:

This is one of my favorite bugs. I call it the Dr. Seuss bug, but in actuality I think it is an immature katydid. However, this one is about 3 times the size of the katydid I posted yesterday, which looked more adult (though it didn't have wings yet). Katydids come in a variety of sizes.