Lacking Confidence

Oops - double dose of procrastination today. First I procrastinated on doing my bug walk a bit too long (though that wasn't all procrastination - I was busy, and I kind of forgot that with the end of daylight savings time last night, I had one less hour to get out there), and now I have procrastinated too long on writing this, and all I can say is, there better not be any snafus in loading the pictures.

Not much to say about my bug walk today, really. It was cold, it was late in the afternoon, I didn't find a lot of bugs.

Backyard bug of the Day:

 I tried looking this up, and my results are inconclusive. [It might be an argicera flower moth caterpillar, but that is far from a confident identification. Edit - I am pretty sure that's not what it is. So I have no idea] It was small, about a half inch long, and I don't know if that is because it is just a small species of moth (whether it is an argicera flower moth or not - the book isn't very detailed on this one), or if this is an early instar. It seems pretty late in the season for an early instar, though. But if it likes to feed on dried up goldenrod plants, well, there are plenty of those around. I almost didn't see this one - it was getting kind of dusky (and it was overcast) by the time I finished my bug walk, and I almost skipped the front yard, but I decided not to be lazy, and found this on a plant by the front walk. And given the low light, and the smallness of this, and the fact that it blended really well on the plant, when I saw it I thought it was just a bit of dried leaf. But for some reason I decided to look closer, and there it was, Backyard Bug of the Day.

Random Bugs:

 

 I found a couple of candy striped leaf hoppers.

 I was kind of surprised to see them - I don't know what the temperature was when I went outside, but it was 48F when I went back in less than an hour later, so it's a bit chilly for them. But they were there, so... what do I know?

 Another surprise sighting - ambush bug. I haven't seen one of those in... ages. Over a month. Maybe more like 2.

 I didn't even see many March flies. Those I did see were almost all resting on leaves - I think I only saw two doing their aerial dance (I can't really call it swarming if there were only two, can I?).

Arachnid Appreciation:
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When it's cold out and I am having trouble finding bugs, the longer it takes me to find anything, the more I think that I am going to find nothing, so when I do find something, it's probably more thrilling than it should be. Anyway, finding this tiny spider was a big thrill:

 

 Daddy-long-legs in a crevice in a rock.