THIS IS THE FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 2015 POST

 NOTE: This is the blog for Friday, June 26th. Because of technical difficulties, I didn't get it published in time for the date on the post to be correct.

Technical difficulties have delayed me, so I am really late. Which is something of a theme around this blog today, because I was also running late when I went out to do my bug walk, and so I wasn't able to be as thorough as I usually am.

Fortunately, I did find some beautiful bugs today.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is a banded hairstreak butterfly. If you have an absolutely exceptional memory, and have been reading this blog regularly for months, you may remember that several weeks ago there was a weird caterpillar that was Backyard Bug of the Day that I thought might be a banded hairstreak caterpillar. Think about it - this could be that caterpillar, transformed and flying around my backyard.

I am now going to bombard you with a ton of pictures of this butterfly, because it actually let me take a ton of pictures.

 Not that I am saying it was completely placid about it all.

 This is the closest close-up I could get to the wings, but that's pretty close for a butterfly!

Guess where I first saw today's Backyard Bug of the Day? So, Who's On the Milkweed Today?

On milkweed!

It wasn't alone.

I feel bad. I said that when I finally got a good picture of this bug it could be Backyard Bug of the Day, and I finally did, but I made the hairstreak butterfly BBotD. It is actually harder to get a good picture of a butterfly, those pictures are better than these, and I think I can still do better with this one. Next time, I swear...

Random Bugs:

 Don't let the picture deceive you - this is a tiny, tiny looper. About 1/4 inch long.

 How many moths do you see? (Hint: there are two in the picture).

Here's one of them. The other flew away before I could take its close-up.

 I can't tell if this is a dragonfly or a damselfly...

 I think this one is slightly closer to adulthood than the one from yesterday.

 I think today I took pictures of more species of butterflies in one day than I ever have outside of a butterfly house at a zoo.

Not that they were all good pictures... Here's the great spangled fritillary. Only saw this one today. Ho Hum.

I will now proceed to inundate you with a whole lot of fairly bad pictures of two cabbage white butterflies:

On lavender

 Nice to get a look at the dorsal side - the pictures I posted of a cabbage white last week were only of the ventral view.

 These two were doing a lot of that flutter around each other in circles thing that butterflies sometimes do. And I think that arched body might be a signal of wanting a mate. The book I used to identify the hairstreak, the National Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Familiar Butterflies of North America, says that there are two ways that male butterflies search for a mate. The banded hairstreak uses the perch method, where the male perches on a plant or flower and waits for a good mate to come by, occasionally flying around a bit to investigate other flowers, random other bugs, and perhaps humans standing nearby. The other method involves just flying around until you find a mate. It is interesting because the hairstreak sat and posed for me on a couple of different plants. These two cabbage whites, however (and I don't know the difference between male and female in cabbage whites, if they are sexually dimorphic), were flying around and around together, occasionally pausing on a lavender flower, presumably to feed.

 Not really cooperative...

So, between these, the fritillary, the hairstreak, and the skipper that was also on the milkweed, that is four species of butterfly photographed today.

There were enough moths on the front porch when I got home tonight to have made an impressive Porch Light Lepidoptera Lollapalooza, but I didn't take my camera out. There wasn't anything especially striking, and most of them were moving - I don't even know if I could have gotten a picture of anything. There had to be at least 20 species of moths, though.

I have spent all day trying to figure out what would be the best way to keep the chrysalis in the back of the mailbox from getting smooshed. I haven't come up with anything yet...

Arachnid Appreciation:
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