The Bugs in the Backyard: Going For a Ride

After a couple of really nice, really buggy days, the heat and humidity were back today, and the bugs didn't show up in droves for a day in the 90s. Also, I did my bug walk in the early evening, so maybe that was a factor.

I haven't mentioned it in a while, but I have rules that I have to follow on this blog about what I post on it. It's a daily blog about my backyard, so any picture I post on it has to have been taken in my backyard, on the day I am writing about. There are other rules, which I have sometimes broken, but I am firm in the stance that this should only be pictures of bugs in my yard, on the day of the blog. So I have a bit of a quandary about today. I have a picture of a great bug, pretty weird, and one I have not seen before. The picture was taken this afternoon. But it was not taken in my backyard. It was taken in a parking lot about three miles away from my backyard. However, it was a bug from my backyard. You see, we got in the car to go run an errand, and there was a bug on the windshield, which my husband saw as we were driving down the driveway. Apparently he mentioned it, but I was talking to my niece, and didn't hear him when he said there was a bug on the windshield. If I had heard him, and had seen the bug, I would have asked him to stop the car, so I could go in the house and get my camera. But I didn't hear him, and half a mile down the road, I noticed the bug myself. It looked pretty cool from inside the car, and I thought it was possibly a weevil, but it was hard to tell. The bug stayed on the windshield over the three miles we traveled, even when we were on the highway. As soon as we got to where we were going, and my husband parked the car, I took out the camera I keep in my purse - yes, I keep a camera in my purse so I always have one. It's not as fancy as the one I use at home, and doesn't have a macro lens, but it is a very useful thing to have (I don't have a cellphone, in case you are wondering why I didn't just use that). So, I took pictures of the bug with that camera, and in spite of the lack of macro lens, they came out pretty well. The dilemma is this: can I use this bug as the Backyard Bug of the Day, when I did not take the picture in my backyard? I have decided yes, because that is where the bug came from, and since it was on the windshield of the car in the yard, the pictures I took would have been exactly the same (well, maybe closer if I had used the macro lens, and I probably would have taken some from inside the car to get that view, something I couldn't really do with the pocket camera). So...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

A weevil. I know I have posted weevils many times before, and I said this is new to me, but this is a new weevil - I have never seen on that looks like this, with the long red snout, and just the general shape of the face. You can recognize "true weevils" by the antennae with that bend in them. The weevil's mouth is at the end of that long snout.

Before we move on to other bugs, here's Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

This tree frog hopped onto the window screen on the window next to the couch last night, while I was writing yesterday's blog. It was too late to be in that blog, so here it is now. I took a couple of pictures of it, and then it hopped away again.

Random Bugs:

A looper caterpillar on the hand of a friend who came over for lunch today.

Sweat bee on autumn joy sedum

This grasshopper was not in one of the two places where I always see grasshoppers, but I think this is a different species than those grasshoppers.

Gnat

Winter firefly

Doing a bit of wing flexing

I think this is an American dagger moth. It is pretty large, as moths go.

Sawfly larvae

Discarded exoskeleton. It looks like it's from a leaf-footed bug

Cricket

I found this white hickory tussock moth caterpillar in a weird posture.

It then appeared to be biting or picking at its... let's call it its chest for lack of a better word. I thought maybe it was going to molt, so I watched it for about ten or fifteen minutes. Nothing happened. I needed to get going on my bug walk, as darkness was approaching, so I left it...

... and then found another WHTMC that had obviously just finished molting. If I had not spent 15 minutes watching that other one do nothing, I might have seen it!

Its face had not even completely fallen off! You can see the eyes on the new white head, and also where they were on the discarded faceplate.

Its hindmost prolegs were twitching.

I found this inches away from the WHTMC that had just molted. Remember yesterday I posted a picture of a white marked tussock moth caterpillar? This is in - it has entered the pupal stage.

Large milkweed bug adult and nymph... or is the nymph a small milkweed bug?

Many large milkweed bug adults, and a few nymphs. This is interesting because before this, I had only ever seen one large milkweed bug - for year I have only seen small milkweed bugs in my backyard.