Double Beauty

As expected, today was a 2-butterfly day in the dining room. What was unexpected was that one of them would eclose before 9:00 in the morning. I don't know what time the other one eclosed, because we went out at around 10:00. It was out and ready to fly when we got home in the afternoon. I could tell from their relative states last night that they would be ready at different times, though.

Butterfly #1:

 Female

 

 She wasn't ready to fly, but I didn't want to leave her in the house all day, because they get feisty and harder to capture for release after a few hours, so I found her a sheltered spot to hang out until she was ready to go.

Here's what the second chrysalis looked like when we left:

 The expansion joints hadn't popped yet, so I knew it would be a couple more hours.

Butterfly #2:

 Also female. She was ready to fly, but not much, yet, so when we took her outside the first thing she did was fly over to my husband and land on his leg. After a few minutes she took off flying for real...

... and landed in a tree. Can you see her? Monarchs spend their nights roosting in trees, so it was a good place for her to go.

And tomorrow I am expecting another eclosure:

 This is the chrysalis that formed lying down rather than hanging. It's not smooth like the others, and the shape is a little off, so I don't know what kind of shape the butterfly will be in.

 The wing is looking pretty good, though.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Beetle

 It looks like candy. I think this might be a new species for me.

Other Bugs:

 Tree cricket, immature.

 A monarch caterpillar that hatched a couple of days ago. I am not adopting this one at the moment.

 I am not sure if this is a caterpillar (one of the "slug-like" caterpillars) or a syrphid fly (hover fly) larva. I have never seen a syrphid fly larva that fat, but maybe that's what they look like in a later stage? It is on a plant (the back porch tree) with a lot of aphids, the food of syrphid fly larvae. And the leaf doesn't have caterpillar damage. I'll try to see if it's still around tomorrow.

 Sawfly (I think)

Sawfly larvae (not necessarily the same species as that sawfly). These are really tiny, obviously recently hatched, and you can see the "eggs" that were inserted in the leaf, that they have hatched from.

 Another caterpillar that has succumbed to the weird affliction.

The last two summers were extremely un-buggy according to my own previous observations of how many bugs I should be finding, and at the time I figured it was because we were in a drought. But this year we are not in a drought, and I still am not finding a lot of bugs.

 Case in point: the purple cone flowers. This year I have more of the flowers than I have ever had before, and I was thrilled in part because these flowers are bug magnets, so I thought I was going to have a lot of bugs. They attract bees, butterflies, beetles, just so many different kinds of bugs. And here are a bunch of flowers with no bugs on them. Yes, there are occasional visits from butterflies, and...

 ... some bumblebees, but there should be a LOT of bugs around these flowers, all the time. Each one should have an ambush bug hiding on it, and maybe two or three. A few of them did, but even the ambush bugs aren't there now. I don't get it.

I found something surprising on my bug walk today:

 A monarch caterpillar that is just about full grown. As this summer has been going, the monarch caterpillars are about the only insect that has been numerous, and I check the milkweed plants constantly, but somehow this caterpillar managed to grow to this size without being noticed!

 Plant hopper

 Moth

 Fly

I've got some great spiders for you, but I warn you now, if you are a mild arachnophobe, and can handle the smaller, cuter spiders I post, this one has a spider you may find alarming. Arachnid Appreciation:

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 After finding the huge web yesterday afternoon, I went out late last night (technically this morning) looking for the spider, because I knew that the time to find it in the center of its web is at night. It was right where I expected it to be. I don't know the species, but it's a nice, big orb weaver.

 It pulled its legs in around its body when I tried to get this shot.

This is what it does during the day, hides out in a leafy bower at the edge of the web. I couldn't find its bower yesterday (this is in a tree), but I found it today.

I think this is a new species for me:

 Note the silk thread wafting in the wind.

 This spider is so tiny I couldn't even tell that it was a spider until I looked through the macro lens.

Flower crab spider. I actually saw it walking along the leaf sideways, like a crab. I don't think I've ever seen one do that before, in spite of the name.