Mind Your Head

I presume that the reason that another name of autumn is fall is because of the falling leaves. But right now what is falling in my backyard is acorns. Lots of them.

 They come clattering out of the trees in bunches. There's one tree I avoid walking under, because I don't want to be bonked on the head. Every once in a while one will land on the shed, making a loud bang. Oddly, I am not seeing squirrels around, madly collecting them. There will be plenty of food for the deer this winter, as long as all these acorns don't get buried under two feet of snow so they can't find them.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is either a twenty-spot lady beetle or a fourteen-spot lady beetle. The distinction has nothing to do with the number of spots. Unfortunately, they both look a lot alike to me.

I had a lot of this happening today when I tried to take pictures of bugs:

 Small milkweed bug

 Beetle

 Sharpshooter

Spindle legged something, or something like that

 Earwig

It was sort of frustrating. Still I found more bugs today than I have a lot of other days, so it wasn't all bad.

Random Bugs:

 After having mentioned lately that I hardly ever see beetles anymore, I found a few today. There was the lady beetle above, and this net-winged beetle, found crawling out of a funnel web spider's web...

 ... and this. Whatever this is. There are actually two bugs in this picture, but one of them is hard to recognize as a bug - the green vertical line in the background on the left is a looper caterpillar. I only saw it myself because it moved.

 Assassin bug - Hemiptera, not a beetle

 Tree cricket

 Bee. Lots of those around still, but mostly too fast for pictures.

Here's a better look at the small milkweed bug, on goldenrod.

 Wasp

 Flies.

 Yesterday's Backyard Bug of the Day, still sitting on the same leaf.

 Here's a better look at the sharpshooter.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 A spider trying to blend in on a branch

I spotted this jumping spider trying to climb on my computer. Must have wanted to get on the web. I told it that was not the way to get on my blog.