At Least I Can Spell Caterpillar

You know how there are some people who are terrible at spelling, and they go along blithely misspelling words, and if you ask them why they didn't look up a word in the dictionary to find out how to spell it (not that anyone does that anymore with the internet available to them, but in the old days in which I grew up), they say that they can't look it up because they don't know how to spell the word?

That is how I am with caterpillar identification. I thought that having a nice, thick caterpillar guide would solve all of my problems of caterpillar identification, but it turns out that in order to look up a caterpillar you need to know what kind of caterpillar it is. Not exactly, but the book is divided into sections of related caterpillars, and if you don't know what it is, you don't know what it's related to, so you don't know what section to look it up in, and you end up having to go through the entire book, which takes forever because it is a thick book, and oh, I just hate this.

Also, as will shortly be illustrated, part of the problem is that a lot of caterpillars look quite different during the different instars (phases of development), but most caterpillar guides I have seen only show the last instar. So it is possible that the caterpillar you're looking for is in the book, but it doesn't look like the picture. Yet.

Case in point: Backyard Bug of the Day:

 You've seen this caterpillar before, if you have been reading the blog the last couple of days, but you may not recognize it, because yesterday it was brown and white. Today it is green and white. It was also spikier before. It might be a red-spotted purple caterpillar (meaning it will become the red-spotted purple butterfly. It is obviously not red-spotted or purple at the moment), but it doesn't look exactly like the picture in the book, so probably not.

 

 Not the droplet of water on its side. It started to rain as soon as I walked out the door to do my bug walk, and since this caterpillar is on a tree growing through the back porch I took a couple of pictures before going back in.

It's defense seems to be contorting itself.

 As a reminder of what the above caterpillar looked like yesterday, here is another of the same species that is on the same tree (I took this during my second attempt at a bug walk, which was curtailed by thunder shortly after I went outside).

 Very sparkly and prickly looking.

 And this is another one on the same tree, earlier instar.

 Also this one. So you see why it is hard to figure out what this is.

Random Bugs:

 Primrose moths back again today. There are two in this picture.

 Beetle preparing to fly

Ambush bugs

 I found this tiny cricket on my shower curtain. Here it is on the front porch after I released it.

 Also on the front porch: fish fly

This was on the screen door last night. This is one firefly, with the camera on a long exposure; as the firefly walked around it showed up repeatedly on the picture. Some day I will master the technique of taking pictures of fireflies... or will at least find a firefly that will cooperate.