What a Hoot!

The most wonderful thing in the backyard today (or tonight, rather) was something I didn't see, but only heard. There were three to five owls in the trees, calling to each other in strange and amazing ways. There was hooting, but there was also squawking, and something that sounded like laughter. We tried to see if we could find them, but although I could tell what trees they were in sometimes, we could not see them among the leaves. We could tell when they flew to new trees, though, because suddenly the sounds would be coming from somewhere else. It was exciting and beautiful to hear them communicating with each other. It started with just one owl calling out. I could hear it from inside, and figured it had to be close by, so I went out on the back porch to listen. After a while I went back in, but later I could hear the calls again and it sounded like another owl was answering, so, back to the back porch we went. That was when it all got crazy - the sounds they were making were so strange, and loud and raucous. It was great.

Not seeing interesting things was something of a theme in the backyard today, which is my way of saying that I couldn't find any bug. The Backyard Bug of the Day today was inside the house, because I didn't find one outside.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 The eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar I have been raising became a chrysalis today, and so in honor of its new state of being, it is being named Backyard Bug of the Day today. Plus, I didn't have any other candidate. You can see that it has made a mat of silk on the screen, and that it is being held at an angle by a thin thread of silk. If this was outdoors, on the branch of a tree, it would obviously be very well camouflaged.

Random Bugs:

Milkweed leaf beetle and small milkweed bug on a shriveled up milkweed plant.

And that's it. Yes, I saw other bugs, mostly bees, but they were too active, and the wind was too windy for me to get pictures of them. I hardly saw any other bugs at all, and you don't want me to post yet another picture of a white hickory tussock moth caterpillar, do you? Without a doubt this was the most dispiriting bug walk ever. It was a beautiful day, and there were no bugs around. Well, there was this one butterfly that only pretended it was going to cooperate with me, but other than that...

The weather has taken a turn for the seasonal, so I am interested to find out what this means for finding bugs...