Right Under My Nose

I was sitting at my computer, trying to find something from my bug walk that was interesting so that I could have a good Backyard Bug of the Day, and feeling discouraged that nothing really jumped out at me as THE bug for today, when it landed right in front of my computer.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 In addition to being an absolutely extraordinary-looking insect, and being new to me (Yay! New species!), I didn't have even the slightest idea what this is. It sort of looks like a moth, but not really, and sort of looks like a caddisfly, but not really. I just don't know enough about bugs to guess where to even look it up (though I did look under moths and caddisflies). I asked for help in an insect group on facebook, and someone identified it as a Derbid planthopper (from the family Derbidae). He said the species is Apache degeeri. So, I looked that up in Kaufman's Field Guide to Insects of North America. I hadn't even considered looking under planthoppers, because that's not what it looked like to me at all, but there was one very similar. This particular species was not there, but one that was shaped like it, but differently colored, was. The book describes these planthoppers as "resembl[ing] small moths or caddisflies, but have a pronounced broad snout." So, there you go. I am not the only person who saw that resemblance.

 I almost didn't bother to look closely at it at all, because I thought it was just a small, brown moth, and I was going to shoo it away, but something made me pick up my camera (which was nearby) and have a look, and I am so glad that I did. Sometimes things look completely different when you look at them close up. There's a lesson in that.

The colors of it are wonderful.

As you can probably guess, my bug walk was not quite so extraordinary. However, by coincidence, I did find another Derbid planthopper, though I didn't realize it was closely related to the Backyard Bug of the Day until I happened to see it on the same page in the bug book:

 It is from the genus Scolops, but the book doesn't say what species. There were two of them, on leaves near to each other. They both look like they are about to lay eggs, but that could just be a part of its anatomy, I suppose.

Random Bugs:

 Katydid

 Grasshopper

 Ladybeetle

 Assassin bug

 Here's what's left of the tree the caterpillars were on. You can see one caterpillar in this picture, because that's all that was there today. Sort of.

 This is the leaf that yesterday had a caterpillar folded up inside it. I don't know if it ate its own way out, or if another caterpillar devoured its leaf.

But there was another leaf folded over...

 ... and that's what's inside it. I really don't know exactly what we're looking at here, but it does look like some caterpillar legs there.

 And speaking of caterpillar legs...

... here's some caterpillar prolegs.

Caterpillar close-up.

 Robber fly

 I think this is an assassin bug

 Bee

Having a tree growing through the back porch seems to have increased the number of bugs attracted by the back porch light. Until this summer, the front porch light always attracted way more bugs than the back porch light, but lately it seems more even.

 Here's a cricket on the back porch tree.

 

 A moth attracted by the back porch light.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Orchard spider

Another orchard spider