A Sure Thing

As you have probably noticed, I have not been having the greatest luck finding bugs lately. Like, for this entire year. I am still blaming the drought. There are a few methods to finding bugs that are pretty trustworthy, though, and one of them is to go where you already know there are bugs. So that is what I did for today's Backyard Bugs of the Day.

Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day #1:

 Aphids. Not popular insects. I went looking for these on the aster plant where I did not notice them yesterday, but saw them in the picture later, and sure enough, they were blending in very nicely on that plant. Quite a few of them. I think these are all the same kind, but in different stages of life. I chose them for Backyard Bugs of the Day because I have seen so few of them this year, they are a bit of a novelty at the moment.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 

 I think this is a fungus beetle (handsome fungus beetles is the heading in Kaufman's Field Guide to Insects of North America), species Endomychus biguttatus. Yep. That's quite a name. I wasn't going to make this a Backyard Bug of the Day today, because I thought it had already been chosen this year, but I just looked back at the bugs from this year and realized that it was another beetle, which I thought at first was a fungus beetle, but later decided was actually a sap beetle. That is probably all very confusing, but the point is, this is a beetle that looks similar at first, but is, in fact, a different beetle. It also looks like a ladybeetle, but it's not.

 

 

 Random Bugs:

 I didn't get a better look than this, so I don't know what it is, but I do know it's from the order Hemiptera - see the proboscis?

 I almost never get hummingbirds at my hummingbird feeders, but they are very popular with insects.

 This ladybeetle was about 30 feet away from where all of the aphids were.

After failing to see so many things yesterday, I felt pretty good about finding this tiny beetle, about as big as the comma in this sentence.

Then I almost missed seeing this stinkbug, because I was concentrating on looking for a spider (which I did not find, just a piece of the plant stuck in a web).

Cricket, female

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 These flower crab spiders hang out on the goldenrod when it's in bloom, and they blend in pretty well with the yellow flowers, which is great for an ambush predator. But I found a couple today, still hanging out on the goldenrod plants, but now the plants have gone to seed. The spiders don't blend in so well, and also, now there are no insects visiting the flowers. I wonder what the deal is, then, with the spiders. Do they not realize that there is no reason for insects to come to those plants anymore? Will they give up and move on? Or will they starve?