Welcoming

It's a girl! A female monarch butterfly!

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Monarchs generally eclose in the morning, so I got up really early to see this happen, when it was barely light outside, and I was too late. She had already eclosed. Her wings were dry, and she was just hanging off of her chrysalis.

This is the first and so far only monarch butterfly I have seen this year.

 I brought her outside to release her. I had hoped that she would be kind of mellow, and pose for me, but she wasn't. She crawled up my arm...

 ... and then flew off into a tree.

 She was a little bit clumsy. You may be wondering why I am calling her "she." That is because this is a female monarch. If she was a male, there would be black dots on each of her hindwings, and the dark veins would be thinner. Later in the day, when I did my bug walk, I caught glimpses of butterflies this color and size, and while they could have been viceroys, or even other monarchs (which would mean this is not the only monarch I have seen this year), I choose to think it was this one.

Random Bugs:

 Robber fly eating a long-legged fly

 White hickory tussock moth caterpillar

 Bee

 Looper caterpillar

 Bee

 Assassin bug

Still hanging around and growing...

 I tried again, now that they seem to have settled on a color scheme, to identify these, and I am still not sure, but they could be black-etched prominent caterpillars (not furculas. Or maybe they are, it's confusing).

 There are six that you can see in this picture, and another on the back side of one of the leaves, out of view here.

Caterpillar Close-ups

  Some day soon I am going to go looking for these and they will all be gone...

 Grasshopper

 Weevil

 A trio of small copper butterflies

 I don't know which is which, but I think the ones close together to the left are male and female. They flew to a nearby plant together, and there was an apparently unsuccessful courtship.

Some kind of Hemiptera

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Daddy-long-legs missing a few legs