Porch Light

 Drat - loading the pictures took so long that I lost track of the time, and posted a minute too late. This is the blog for THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 2016.

We went out last night, and because it was still light outside when we left the house, I forgot to turn on the porch light for when we got home. It's not a big deal as far as getting in the house, but in reality the reason I had intended to turn on the light was because I was hoping for some bugs to be on the porch when we got home. So, when we got home I turned on the porch light with the intention of going outside to see what was attracted to it. Then I forgot about it for a few hours, until it was after midnight - in other words, today. I went out after I finished writing my blog, and found a bona fide Porch Light Lepidoptera Lollapalooza!

 I didn't count how many species of moths there were, but there are 4 in this shot, covering about a foot of wall space (and a few other little bugs).

 This spot underneath the light was very popular. Some of the moths stayed there the whole time I was out watching them, but others came and went.

Now a closer look at some of the moths:

 Plume moth

 I would say about half of the moths on the porch were this species.

 Finally! The eight spotted forester moth sits still for a picture!

 

 This is a species of geometer moth, which are the ones that come from looper caterpillars.

 Quite a few of the moths were on the floor (In fact, I accidentally stepped on a couple, which I feel bad about).

 

 

 The moth on the left was the biggest of the ones on the porch, about 3 inches wide. There were many that were much smaller, fractions of an inch long. Also in this shot, an ant, which is a very unusual nighttime porch visitor.

 A lot of the moths kept landing on me (I had to make sure to keep my mouth closed), and this one sat on my hand, vibrating its wings.

 

 Ailanthus webworm moth

 This one's wings were vibrating, too.

There were lots of other insects on the porch last night other than moths, which brings us to Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

This is a treehopper from the genus Glossonotus, but my book doesn't have the species. This is a brand new species for me, so I was very excited to find it. I almost didn't really look at it - sometimes I will see something and think I know what it is, and think it is not interesting enough to look at closely, but something makes me change my mind and check it out, and I find out it is quite interesting indeed - that was what happened with this amazing bug.

 Green lacewing

 There were quite a lot of hoppers on the porch, many of them really, really tiny (and I didn't get pictures of any of those, because they were too hoppy), but I did photograph a couple...

 

 This looks a lot like a cranefly, but it is really small. I don't know if craneflies come this small.

 Beetle

 Ichneumon wasp, I think.

 

 Fly.

These are not all of the insects - moth or otherwise - that were on the porch last night. I took over 150 pictures, and after finding so many species in that brief time late at night (while listening to owls have a wacky conversation in the trees nearby, where I could hear but not see them), I decided I wasn't going to do a bug walk today, partly because I am lazy, and partly because I didn't want to find something else amazing after already finding a Backyard Bug of the Day. But then I happened to be looking out the window in the afternoon and saw a butterfly that looked like it might be cooperative, so I grabbed my camera and went out.

The butterfly in question was a swallowtail (I don't know what species), and not all that cooperative after all.

But before I could go inside after the swallowtail flew away, I spotted another butterfly, which is Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

This is a species of butterfly I have never seen before anywhere, much less in my backyard - a Baltimore checkerspot. There are two things that are thrilling about this - one, that I saw a brand new species of butterfly in my backyard, and two, that I was actually able to find it in my not-very-comprehensive butterfly book.

So, still determined not to do a bug walk, I spotted this:

Robberfly. It was so cooperative I just had to take a picture.

I didn't see any woolly aphids flying around today, but I did spot this one on a leaf before going into the house. It is only when I looked at it on the computer that I realized it is lying on its back. I have no idea why. It was alive, though, because it flew off while I was adjusting the settings on my camera (I did not see it fly off, so I was not lying when I said I didn't see any flying today).