The Bugs in the Backyard: Is Weird a Scientific Term?

The most exciting thing in the backyard today was not a bug. It wasn't even an arthropod. It was in a completely different class. A different phylum, even. Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Class Mammalia, Order Carnivora, Family Felidae, Genus Lynx, Species Lynx rufus (Yes, I had to look most of this up. I don't even know all the categories of taxonomy). Commonly known as a bobcat.

I had already done my bug walk, and we were getting ready to go out, and just as I got to the back door to go outside I saw a cat walking up one of my backyard paths. It took me a second to realize that it wasn't a house cat, but a bobcat. Obviously a young one, on the small side for a bobcat. I ran to get my camera...

By the time I got my camera, expecting the bobcat to have disappeared from view perhaps, the bobcat had plunked itself down on the path (about 30 feet from the house) in the sun and was grooming itself. There is a flowerbed full of rather tall wildflower plants between us and the bobcat. I went upstairs to try to take pictures from the bedroom window, but there was a small tree directly between the window and the bobcat. So, back to the back door...

It stretched out in the grass...

Lay down for a snooze...

Decided more grooming was in order...

Yawned...

Decided it didn't want to lie in the sun...

Got up...

And went to lie down in the shade a little way up the path.

It lay down again, but its tail was waving up and down the whole time.

Being a fool, perhaps, I quietly went out the front door and walked around the house to try to get a closer shot. Mind you, these pictures were taken with a telephoto lens. I wasn't that close. But it sat up when it heard the camera shutter.

What a beauty.

I didn't find anything all that impressive on my bug walk, not anything that I got a good picture of, anyway, so I was figuring I would have to use something unimpressive as Backyard Bug of the Day, but when we got home from our bike ride and I opened the basement hatchway to put the bikes away, something impressive hopped onto the stairs.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

One of the possibly naive, or perhaps just thoughtless and ignorant assumptions I made about bugs before I started really looking at them a couple of years ago is that there is only one kind of the various types of bugs. Well, not all of the types - I knew there were a lot of beetles, for instance. But I think that I thought there was just one kind of crickets. Just... the cricket. But There are many, many kinds of crickets. And this is one of them.

There is a section in the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America labeled Weird Crickets. I kid you not. Weird Crickets. Of the many species of crickets in the book, the one that looks most like this one is in that category of Weird Crickets, and is called a camel cricket. It gives two examples, of the 89 (89!) species of camel crickets found in North America. And here I thought there was only one kind of cricket, when this particular category (genus? I told you I was no good at taxonomy) has 89 species just in North America. It boggles the mind... Anyway, here's some of what the book has to say about camel crickets:

"Camel crickets are wingless, hump-backed creatures commonly found in cellars, old wells, abandoned mine shafts, caves, and other dark, damp habitats... Those found outside of caves are nocturnal and can be lured by laying a trail of oatmeal."

There is no explanation about why one would want to lure one.

This one appears to be female, because that looks like an ovipositor sticking out the back end. By the way, that oval shape on its back leg is something that stuck to it when it landed in an old spiderweb - the stairs of the cellar hatchway is full of them.

The patterns of this cricket are gorgeous, though perhaps she never heard that it is a Fashion Don't to mix so many patterns. No matter, I think she looks smashing.

Most impressive antennae, too.

Random Bugs:

Okay, I was wrong - I did get pictures of some interesting bugs. This could have been Backyard Bug of the Day, if the cricket hadn't hopped in. This is a hopper nymph of some sort, I think. So many hopper nymphs around lately...

... like this one...

When I spotted this on the shed I thought it was a spider from the way it was moving. It was really small, so I couldn't see its details. Looking at it through the camera I realized it was not a spider, and it appears to be a very young Hemiptera of some kind.