Borrowing

Day one of taking pictures with a borrowed camera. It's exactly the same as my camera, but there's a weirdness to using someone else's camera for my work. I never realized how connected I feel to my camera. I'm not careless with my camera, but I was really conscious about worrying I'd break this one. Also, my husband is using the data card that came with the camera, which is not very spacious, memory-wise, and already had stuff on it. I was in the middle of taking pictures of a bug when I got the message: "Memory card full." I had to go in the house to get my own memory card (I just got a new one that has twice the memory I have been using - not because I needed that much, but because that's all the store had), and hope the bug would still be there when I got back (it was). I was also very conscious of the reason I was using my husband's camera in the first place - I take a lot of pictures, and wore mine out. He has had his for a couple of months and according to the file numbers has taken just over 600 pictures. I took over 400 today. I moved him that much closer to his own camera's demise. Although, from his current usage I would say that it is going to be a LOOOOOOOOONG time before he reaches 100,000 shots. Even though he now only has 99,000 left.

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

In parts of the backyard it was a really buggy day - specifically, in the heart-shaped goldenrod patch - and in the rest of the backyard, not so much. But where I found today's Backyard Bug of the Day was kind of odd.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 We recently got a new dishwasher, and the old one is sitting in the backyard at the moment, waiting to be hauled away. I found this caterpillar in a sort of thin cocoon made out of its own hairs on the side of the door. Unfortunately, opening the door dislodged the cocoon, and the caterpillar fell onto the ground. I picked it up with a leaf to move it out of the way as I was moving the dishwasher. It curled itself up for a while (you can see the remains of the cocoon).

 Later it straightened out. I moved the leaf under the steps of the back porch, and I hope it will find a better place for whatever it was doing. I would guess it was preparing to pupate, and I hope being disturbed does not mean that won't happen.

 Caterpillar close-up

There were a few other arthropods inhabiting the old dishwasher, but you'll see those at the end of the blog. Meanwhile, the real action was in the goldenrod:

A hoverfly, an ailanthus webworm moth, and a bumblebee...

TWO hoverflies, an ailanthus webworm moth, and a bumblebee. I love that there were so many different kinds of bugs, all just coexisting on the same flowers.

While there are a lot of bugs whose numbers seem way down this year, or that I have not seen at all, I have never seen so many ailanthus webworm moths.

 There were several grasshoppers among the goldenrod.

And flies:

 A lot of bees...

Assassin bug and sharpshooter

 Sharpshooters don't like to have their picture taken.

 Can you see the katydid?

 How about now? And a hoverfly. There is a bumblebee in this picture, too.

 Katydid

 Fly and two candy striped leafhoppers.

 

 Looper caterpillar and fly

On other goldenrod, elsewhere in the backyard:

 I think this is a cucumber beetle.

 Cricket

These are the bugs that were in other parts of the backyard, on plants other than goldenrod - Random Bugs:

 Weevil

 Jumping bristletail on a tree...

... and jumping bristletail on a rock. There were a couple there.

 White hickory tussock moth caterpillar on the move. They can move pretty fast.

 Woolly bear caterpillar

 Caterpillar close-up

 Fly

 I don't know why this thing is called a hummingbird feeder...

 A couple of true bugs - a leaf-footed bug (that one's probably obvious), and a stinkbug.

 Leaf-footed bug

 Stinkbug. I have seen very few stinkbugs this year. A couple of years ago this particular tree had about a dozen of them on it at one time. And it's not that big of a tree - at that time I think it was only about as tall as I am.

 Honeydew

 

 Looper caterpillar. I think this is an aster it is on.

 

 Better watch out, Looper, there's an ambush bug nearby.

 Weevil. It has suffered some kind of injury.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Of course, with all of those other insects in the goldenrod, there are spiders there, too. Flower crab spiders...

 

 ... and a tiny jumping spider.

These next two spiders have been neighbors for weeks:

 This one has a web between two trees, about a foot below...

 ... this one's web.

 Another jumping spider, in a tree.

 This jumping spider was crawling along a vine, and it crawled up this leaf, and then I think it sent out a thread into the wind. Given that it seems taut, I guess it caught on something. For some reason the spider sat like this for a couple of minutes, until I accidentally moved the vine.

 Another funnel web spider. I have been trying to weeks to get a picture of this one.

 This spider had a web across a path. It was a small web, and a wide path, but the anchoring threads stretched into the path, and I couldn't see where they were attached, so I had to go around to avoid breaking it.

 After I walked around, I was hoping to see the spider from the other side, but as soon as I got there, an insect landed in its web, so it zoomed over to attack it...

 ... and then immediately another insect landed in the web, and the spider went to attack that one, too.

 When it came back to the center of the web (where it already had some prey) it was on the other side, so I didn't get to see the other side of the spider.

 

 This spider was so small I could barely see it.

These two spiders crawled out of parts of the dishwasher: