Getting Dizzy

There's really not much to say about the backyard today. Most of the bugs I saw - and there weren't many - didn't want their pictures taken, and acted accordingly. It's been a theme lately. So, let's get on with the ones who obliged me, at least a little.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Caterpillar. About half an inch long, maybe a bit less.

 When I found it, it was dangling by a thread like this.

 I know this is a dreadful picture, but bear with me, because I have a story to tell, and this picture illustrates it best. The caterpillar was dangling by its silk thread, and mostly it was in this particular posture, with its body bent so it was almost parallel to the ground. It was wiggling a bit, and would straighten out, but then curl up like this again. All of this makes for a difficult photography subject, but what made it worse is that even though it was mostly a calm day, as soon as I tried to take the caterpillar's picture, the wind started to blow. Well, at this point I hadn't found a bug for Backyard Bug of the Day yet, even though I had already walked over about half of the backyard, and I haven't seen a caterpillar like this so far this year (though, interestingly, it is the second caterpillar this week, so two different species), so it was obviously a good BBotD candidate, so I waited for the gust of wind to die down. But like I said, the caterpillar was wiggling on its own, so even without the wind, it was hard to get a picture. Then something really interesting happened (which I don't have a picture of. Sorry). You know how when figure skaters are doing spins, they pull in really tight to speed up the spin? Well, the caterpillar, who was spinning a little bit as a result of its wiggling, suddenly went perfectly straight and started spinning really fast. I don't know if that was intentional, or just happened as a result of the way it moved, but it had some pretty impressive figure-skater-like speed for a few seconds. If it was not trying to do that, I have to wonder if that made it dizzy. Can caterpillars get dizzy? The world may never know.

 So, you are now wondering, how did the caterpillar get onto the leaf? Did it crawl up the thread, like caterpillars sometimes do? No. I lifted it there myself (grabbing the thread, not the caterpillar). I don't like to do that kind of thing, because of my non-interference policy, but I was frustrated, I needed a decent picture, and I figured if the caterpillar didn't want to be on the leaf it would just fling itself off again, like I see bugs do all the time. However, it didn't seem to mind. It moved onto the leaf edge...

 ... and looked around a bit. Well, maybe look isn't the right word, because caterpillars, in spite of having a lot of eyes, don't have very good eyesight. But it did seem to be investigating its location (and the leaf I moved it onto was on the same vine it had been dangling from anyway, so at least if that was a host plant I didn't remove it). Note how few prolegs it has - just the two pairs in the back. It has the prolegs of an inchworm, but it's a bit stockier than inchworms usually are. Or loopers, as I think they are really called. I didn't see it walk, but with that arrangement of legs that is probably how it moves.

 This was interesting, too - see the silk thread? It seems to have attached it to the leaf and spun it out. Caterpillars' silk glands are near their mouths. Also you can see several of its eyes in this shot.

 Zoomed-in shot of the face, showing the eyes.

Pollinating the dandelions is still the most popular activity for the Backyard's Random Bugs:

 Fly

 Wasp. See, they don't just fly around stinging people for the fun of it (just kidding. They don't do that). They also pollinate flowers.

Tiny bee. That is not its actual name. I am just saying that it was tiny.

 Click beetle getting ready to fly!

 It didn't fly far. Just to another blade of grass about an inch away.

Flying again! It went to another nearby blade of grass.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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