Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Early Riser

I'm posting more than twelve hours earlier than I usually do, because I did my bug walk in the morning today. I had a dream of maybe seeing a luna moth, but it was not to be. Alas. Just the usual bugs.

What is unusual in the backyard the last couple of days is the smell. There are quite a few different kinds of flowers that perfume the air beautifully when they are in full bloom, like the multiflora rose, milkweed, and honeysuckle, and though two of those are blooming right now, the backyard smells terrible. I thought it might be the catalpa trees' blooms as they fell to the ground and decayed, but that seems to be done with, and the backyard still smells kind of gross.

I just had a horrible thought. What if that terrible smell is the odor of thousands of rotting gypsy moth caterpillars? Oh, well, if it is, I would rather have the smell than the live monsters. I thought today might finally be the day in which I saw no live GMCs at all, but that was not the case. They have not ALL succumbed to the fungus, and there were several still crawling around.

Backyard Bug of the Day:
 Four lined plant bug. You can tell that it is from the order Hemiptera because you can see its proboscis, which it jabs into plants to suck out the juices.


Other bugs:
 Tiny wasp?

 Borer

 This is the caterpillar that was Backyard Bug of the Day a couple of days ago.

 It seems hairier now.

 When insects (like dragonflies) or birds eat butterflies, they don't eat the wings.

 Bumblebee

 Long-legged fly

 So many little moths...

 Hopper nymph

Here's something for you to compare, the development of two hopper nymphs of the same species:
 Note that this one has the beginnings of wings.

 The shape is slightly different.

 Still don't know what kind of nymphs these are.

 Cabbage white butterfly on lavender


Another tiny moth

This blog is going on hiatus for about a week for technical reasons. Hopefully by then I won't be seeing any more GMCs, and there will be lots of other interesting bugs in the backyard.

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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Night Lights

Many a summer's evening in my childhood was spent gamboling around the backyard at dusk in pursuit of fireflies. Dusk is the easiest time to catch them, because you can see well enough to run around, and once you've spotted one lit up you can still see its silhouette in the not-quite-dark light to be able to follow it and catch it. I was thinking about this the other night as I was standing on my back porch watching the fireflies. It's not such an unusual thing to remember things from long past and think that they were different than the way things are now, and I kind of feel like that's the case with the fireflies; the ones here don't seem to start lighting up until it's darker, and they mostly flit about the tops of the trees, instead of at kid height above the lawn. My backyard then had more lawn and fewer trees, so maybe they did behave differently then. But it is possible that they were a different species of firefly. I do live in a different area of the country than I did then, and I never really looked that hard at what the fireflies looked like as beetles. I was only interested in the light, even when we had twenty of them in a jar and could look at them up close as they crawled up the glass (we always let them go before we went inside). One thing I am pretty sure about is that never during my childhood did I ever see a firefly during the daytime, and if I did, I am not positive that I would have realized what it was, and might even have squished it, because I thought all bugs were gross (except, obviously, while catching fireflies. Funny how much they didn't really seem like bugs when their green lights danced across the twilight).

Now, though, I look more closely at insects, and I know what a firefly looks like in the daytime. However, my first picture of today's Backyard Bug of the Day is one I took at dusk, when it was almost completely dark (and the mosquitoes were definitely active). Backyard Bug of the Day:
 Okay, not a great picture. But... you can see the firefly. It was darker than the picture implies; I had it on a long exposure.

Actually none of the daytime pictures are great, either, and normally I wouldn't award Backyard Bug of the Day status on the basis of pictures like these, but it's pretty unusual for me to find a firefly during the day (yes, I know, this is the second time this week), so I am taking advantage of the opportunity. It's not my fault the bug wouldn't sit still. Well, actually, yes, it is my fault, but I couldn't help it.

 Nice look at the glowing apparatus. I am sure there is a name for that...



 This is when it landed on my monopod. I was able to take my camera off and get this shot before it flew away... and landed on my shirt.



 Thrips again, either a different species than the other day, or more mature ones.

 The paler one is more like the ones from the other day.


 
 Sometimes I take pictures of bugs without even trying. Or without even knowing. I didn't see the bugs when I took the picture, only when I looked at it on the computer. Can you see them?

More thrips!

 Damselfly

 Same one. I couldn't decide whether to post the one with the natural setting, or the one that's a better picture of the damselfly, so you're getting both.

 I tried to look this up, but there are a couple of bugs that look kind of like this, and none that look exactly like this in the book. I can narrow it down to Plant Bug in the order Hemiptera

Some kind of cocoon

 It looks like something has laid eggs on it

 Skipper with wings up...

 ... and wings open. I used to think that these were called skippers because they look like sailboats when they sit on leaves like this, but apparently the name has to do with the way they fly. And I don't think a skipper is a kind of sailboat anyway. But it should be.

 Leaf hopper

Egg sac, I think

Monday, June 26, 2017

Skipper

I am tired, and mentally overtaxed, and running late, so let's just get to the bugs.

[posting unfinished again. Slooooow internet tonight]

Backyard Bug of the Day:
Skipper. The honeysuckle is invasive, but the butterflies sure like it.


I'm not sure if this is the same one, but I think it's the same species.


Two cooperative butterflies in one day:
Cabbage white. My husband's least favorite butterfly, because they lay eggs on the Brussels sprouts in the vegetable garden.



This is the tiniest hopper nymph I have ever seen. I thought it was a mite when I first saw it, but then it hopped, and mites don't hop.


More hopper nymphs. Can you see all 4 of them?


I think this one is in the process of molting.


I think this is a damselfly, even though the wing position is more dragonflyish. I didn't get a close enough look.

Spittle bug. This bug excreted honeydew on my hand repeatedly.

Speaking of spittle bugs, you can just see the one inside this... blob? Is there a name for this? Anyway, the purpose of the spit blob (it's not really spit. It's excreted from somewhere not its mouth, and then frothed into bubbles with its legs. I think) is for protection. I don't know if it's just a hiding place, or if other insects getting stuck in it like this one is the whole point.

Potato beetle. I know it's a garden pest, but it's not in the garden, and it's so cute! It has a little picture of a butterfly on its pronotum.

Some kind of fly, I think.

Cool eyes

Candy striped leaf hopper

 
Still elusive...

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