A big contrast between yesterday and today in the backyard. Both days were dark and gloomy, but today was about ten degrees cooler, and a great deal less buggy. One similarity between the two days - amphibians.
Backyard Amphibian of the Day:
Frogs and toads (I believe this is a toad) are not a common sight in my backyard - I see them a handful of times over the summer - and I have now seen them two days in a row. Usually I only see them when I am mowing the lawn. I have to mow the lawn tomorrow (if it doesn't rain), maybe I'll extend my streak to three.
Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1
Some kind of beetle larva
Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:
I walked into a swarm of these today. These are tiny hoppers of some kind that I see flying around in the fall. They then land on tree trunks, and usually fly away before I can get close enough to take a picture. Today I actually got pictures of two of them, which is pretty unprecedented. I decided to make them Co-Bugs of the Day because it is very likely that I won't get another picture of one this year.
They have slightly different patterns on them.
Today was very windy, and wind is the enemy of live insect macrophotography. There were so many insects I didn't even bother to try to take pictures of because the wind was blowing the plants around too much. And how many pictures of bumblebees do I really need in one day? Because most of the bugs I saw today were bumblebees.
Random Bugs:
Hoverfly
The white hickory tussock moth caterpillars have gone from the sitting-on-a-tree-trunk mode to an eating mode. I found them on raspberry vines in several places in the backyard today.
Honeybee
One of the many bumblebees. This one was just sitting in one place, rather than flying from flower to flower, so this is the one I photographed.
I saw several looper caterpillars, too:
These first three pictures are all the same one...
Obviously a different one.
Wasp? Or bee? I still don't fully understand the difference.
Cucumber beetle, I think.
Weevil
When it's windy, bugs on tree trunks are the easiest to photograph. Actually, bugs on tree trunks are usually the easiest to photograph.
After teeming with insect life yesterday, the heart-shaped garden was comparatively abandoned today. There were a lot of bumblebees, and:
One hoverfly
One ailanthus webworm moth
One assassin bug
And two spittle bugs involved in a transfer of genetic information.
Arachnid Appreciation:.
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