So Many Caterpillars

I've really got to work on my time management...

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

I found this orange-ish toad tonight when I went outside to look at a moth on the window. The moth had flown by the time I got out there, but I found this toad, so it was a worthwhile effort.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Some kind of fly with amazing eyes. Yet another new bug for me - and yet another I didn't find in my book.

Random Bugs:

Hopper

 Being attended by an ant. Ants look after hoppers because they want the honeydew (basically a sugar water) that the hoppers excrete.

 I saw a LOT of butterflies today, of a variety of species. This is the best picture I got of a butterfly. "But, that's a terrible picture!"you say? EXACTLY.

Moth pretending to be a bit of dried grass. Obviously the moth doesn't have a problem with its blood running to its head (do moths have blood?), because this is what these moths do, so it must not bother them, but that's always what I think about when I see one. That and downward dog in yoga.

It often happens in the spring that at some point a certain species of bug will emerge, and all of a sudden they are everywhere. That is the case with this bug. I think this is a Four Lined Plant Bug. They suddenly appeared yesterday (I didn't get a picture yesterday) and today I saw them all over the place.

Beetle

Beetle

A strangely cozy arrangement of a gypsy moth caterpillar (the small one) and a forest tent caterpillar. The forest tent caterpillar is another example of a bug that has suddenly appeared. A few weeks ago I was seeing them elsewhere in town when I went for a walk (a couple of miles from here), but I wasn't seeing any in my backyard, even though last year there were a lot of them on the crab apple trees. Then today I saw three of them, in different places in the backyard, and in different instars (stages of development between molts in caterpillars or other larvae). What's interesting is that I am suddenly finding them when they are pretty far along in the caterpillar phase, not when they are small.

Caterpillar close-up - forest tent caterpillar.

This one was smaller.

Dangling caterpillar. You really have to watch where you're walking these days...

 Tiny looper caterpillar.

 It looks like it has parasite eggs on its back.

 Sawfly larvae. If those are all the same, I am thinking either they start out green, like the one on the left, and become multicolored, or they start out multicolored and turn green.

 

 Another sawfly larva

 Another caterpillar. The backyard had a lot of insects in their larval stage today.

 

And some in the nymph stage:

Remember these bugs from the other day when I found a lot of them on the flowers of this bush?

I found one today that is looking more developed.

 

 Same kind of bush - click beetle

Grasshopper

A leaf bug of some kind, I think. Anyway, it's a Hemiptera.

 Plume moth

 

 Some kind of fly?

 

 The moth I went outside for flew away, but I did find this one on the window.

Apparently something has eaten a cranefly, and left the undigestible bits behind.

Remember that egg from yesterday?

It has changed to a darker color today.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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A bit of Arachnid Video today: Click HERE to see video of a spider building a web.

 Not the web in the video.