Sunny Days

The last three days were almost identical. There were overnight lows that were about the same, heavt dew in the mornings, daytime highs that were pretty close, and gorgeous sunshine all day each day. And yet the number of bugs I was able to find on each of the three days was wildly different. Two days ago was so-so, yesterday I found quite a lot of bugs, and today... well, today there wasn't much. I have no idea what factors cause that fluctuation. All three days seemed the same to me.

I spent a good portion of my bug walk trying to disentangle myself from silk threads that were across paths or dangling from trees. The backyard was like a giant web.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is a flower fly of some kind. There are many of them - I couldn't identify this one from the book. They are also called hoverflies. They very often look like bees, all the better to convince everyone that they can sting, even though they can't.

Random Bugs:

I am posting this picture primarily to show you the color of the sky. But this is a white m hairstreak butterfly, in case you're wondering.

 The side of the wings I never get to see it brilliant blue.

 The outside of the wings is basically very drab, but if you see it from the right angle they are iridescent.

 Bee or wasp

 Ambush bug

 Not all of the silk threads festooning the backyard were spider webs - there were a lot of these leaf-miner caterpillars lowering themselves from the trees. Not the relative position of these two...

Here they are seconds later. They can drop down and then climb back up again with astonishing speed - although the dropping down is much faster.

 Sawfly or some other kind of wasp

 Arachnid Appreciation:
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These webs were all over the place today.