Mystery Solved!

I am a big fan of saying, "I told you so," when I am right, because being insufferably smug is one of my many character flaws, but I am also willing to admit when I am wrong, and I said something on this blog last week that turned out to be wrong. I said that I would never know what the caterpillars on the back porch tree would turn out to be when they had transformed, and that was wrong. I found out today what kind of caterpillars they were, and what they will become, or in the case of one of them, what it did become. It has become one of today's two Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 Viceroy butterfly! After all that searching to find out what kind of caterpillars they were (those ones that looked like bird droppings and changed from brown and white to green and white and back to brown and white), serendipity intervened and I happened out onto my back porch at the right time to find out by seeing a butterfly. But how did that answer the question of the caterpillars, you ask? Well, to start out with, I went outside to do something, and spotted a butterfly on a stray vine growing next to the porch, kind of amidst the branches of the back porch tree. At first I thought it was a monarch - viceroys and monarchs are easy to confuse - and I thought it was odd that it was hanging around there. I rushed back into the house to get my camera, and when I came out, the butterfly was still there... for a few seconds. I snapped this shot, and...

 Then this one. (It is blurry because it was cooler in the house, and really humid outside, so when I brought the cool camera out into the hot humidity the lens fogged up). I noticed that the butterfly was hanging on something interesting... and when if flew away I saw...

 That is was a chrysalis! An empty chrysalis! That butterfly had eclosed - emerged from this chrysalis, and I had seen it take its first flight! I was so excited (though disappointed that serendipity had not sent me outside sooner)! That was when it occurred to me that perhaps this chrysalis was from one of the caterpillars that had been living on the back porch tree, that perhaps when it had marched away, looking for a place to become a chrysalis, it had not gone very far. It had never occurred to me to look at the other plants (vines, mostly) that are growing at the base of the porch steps, because I thought the caterpillars would travel farther than that. This was probably that first one that left the tree; I don't remember when that was, but it seems about right. So, to figure out if it was one of those caterpillars, I worked backward - instead of looking through the book to find the right caterpillar, I looked up what kind of caterpillar the viceroy butterfly came from (I already knew the butterfly by sight). And voila, there it was in the book. I can't believe I didn't figure it out from before, though I think that when I looked it up was during the earlier instars, when it didn't look so much like the picture. I guess I should have gone back during the last instar, which I actually thought I did, but I must have missed it in any case. Anyway, now I know what those caterpillars were. I checked the plants around the tree to see if I could find any more, but I didn't. I feel so silly that this was hanging there all this time, and I was standing there every day watching the caterpillars on the tree, and I never noticed it. But then, it never occurred to me to look so close for where the caterpillars had gone. Still, it was an exciting moment in backyard bug studies for me.

 Speaking of chrysalides, here's the monarch chrysalis in daylight.

But back to Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 A plant hopper of some kind. The book was kind of confusing about what kind, though. I think this one is a first for me - I have found a similar one in the past, but I think this is a different species than that one about a year ago.


Random Bugs:

 

 This is the last of the furcula moth caterpillars hanging around on the back porch tree - or at least, the only one I could find today, out of the five or six that had been there. None of them were big enough to be pupating, I don't think, but maybe they changed drastically since yesterday. However, the bigger one that was around last week was much bigger than this, and stayed around for days at that size, so, I don't know if they wandered off for another reason, or were eaten, or what. It's kind of sad, really - for the last few weeks that tree has been covered with caterpillars that I was checking on every day, and soon there won't be any there. I'll miss them - the aphids that are all over the leaves are not quite as interesting.

 But the smaller furculas on the other tree elsewhere in the backyard have transformed quite a bit since I last saw them! It is looking a lot more like the ones on the back porch tree now.

Here's two, in different stages of transformation.

 Tiny beetle

 Bug with mites - one near its head, and one on its foot.

 Do you see the photobomber?

 Close-up

 This is a funny bee - it looks like it was put together with spare parts. The front doesn't really match the back.

 This ant (I think it's an ant) is huge - about an inch long

An unfortunate find:

 Gypsy moth egg masses. I found some a few weeks ago, just as the moths were emerging, mating, and laying eggs. I scraped them off, but I then read that you can't just scrape them off, you have to dump them in soapy water or spray them with an anti-gypsy moth egg spray. Fortunately, I have until next spring to get rid of these, so I am keeping my eyes open for more, to destroy whatever I find.

 

 I think this is a dagger moth.

 Small copper butterfly, I think

 Weevil

 Caterpillar

 

 I have been trying for two years now to get a really good picture of one of these huge bees. I am still trying...

 A glimpse of a swallowtail...

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Crab spider hiding under a petal

 

 Spider and newly hatched spiderlings. I am not sure if the mother spider is still alive - she didn't move at all, and my picture taking was pretty intrusive.

 

 Jumping spider on the storm door

Jumping spider on the side of the house