Trying To Figure Things Out

Clearly, even after all this time, I still don't know anything about bugs, and what they like, and when is the best time to find them. It was quite chilly this morning, and the forecast said that we would have highs in the low 70s. So, when I went outside for a minute around 11:00 in the morning, when it finally had reached 60ºF, and noticed that there were a lot of bees and wasps buzzing around the goldenrod, I decided not to go in and get my camera to do my bug walk, figuring if there were so many bugs around when it was 60ºF, there would be more later when it was 72ºF. So, I went inside to do other things. Well, we never quite reached the 70s, and when I went out, though it was warmer than it had been earlier (68ºF), most of the backyard was in the shade, unlike how it had been in the morning, bathed in sunshine. And I had a really hard time finding any bugs. At all. The number of bees on the goldenrod had diminished sharply, and I barely found anything else anywhere else. It was a sort of bug walk fail. But maybe I learned something - maybe sunshine matters more to bugs than temperature.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 A tiny looper caterpillar

Random Bugs:

 If you'd sat still for me, you could have been Backyard Bug of the Day...

 Craneflies

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 This encounter took place on the funnel web on the rain gauge. I can't tell if this is spider-on-spider predation, or mating. I am not even sure how many spiders this is; it looks like two, but it also sort of looks like three. Interesting to note there is a droplet of something underneath the spiders, dangling from some spider body part. Also quite obvious is that these spiders don't look alike - they are different in size and shape. However, that is sometimes the case between males and females with spider species. So if this is a mating situation, that would be the female on the left (underneath the other spider), the larger, rounder spider, and the male on top, on the right, a smaller, more oblong spider. That spider's abdomen was moving up and down a bit. I should have gone back to check on them after my walk, but I was preoccupied and forgot.

 In this zoomed-in shot you can see the face of the possible male spider.