Every Day Is Different

It's weird how different one day can be from the next in my backyard, even if the weather is more or less the same. Yesterday I saw about 50 tiny crickets, and they provided the main musical theme in the backyard, but today I barely heard them (katydid sounds were the theme of the day) and didn't see any until I happened to be outside in the evening and saw one on the side of the house.

Curious.

 Here's the one cricket. It may be the smallest cricket I have ever seen.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I thought it was some kind of fruit fly, but there are two other genuses it might belong to, so I don't know. It didn't look exactly like any of the ones in the book.

 It was marching around in circles on this leaf, waving its wings around, which I assume was either territorial or an attempt to attract a mate.

Other Bugs:

 These are the eggs that I glimpsed underneath a leaf in a picture from the other day. Not clumped together, so not green lacewing. In other words, I don't know what they are.

And speaking of eggs...

 I've been keeping an eye on the spicebush swallowtail egg that I saw laid the other day, waiting for it to hatch. Today I discovered that the leaf had been folded over, and inside was some other kind of caterpillar. The egg appears to still be intact, but I worry that this other caterpillar might eat it.

 Fly

 Caterpillar

 Brand new ladybeetle pupa, right next to one that has been there a few days. The brand new one is practically neon orange.

Later on the color had darkened a bit. This is on the back porch tree; it used to have ladybeetle larvae all over it, and now there are very few larvae, but quite a lot of pupae. There are also a lot of pupae on the walls of the porch and on the side of the house, obviously larvae that crawled away to pupate.

So, on the side of the house I found a ladybeetle that had just eclosed. You can see that the larval case is split open. I kept an eye on it for a few hours; the wings eventually were tucked in, and it looked like it might be darkening in color, but not really very much. Then it was gone.

 Winter firefly that has had an unfortunate accident. It was still alive, but I don't think it can fly anymore.

Speaking of which, I accidentally ran over a tiny from with the lawnmower. I felt awful about it, but it was able to hop away pretty fast with its remaining 3 legs.

 Honeybee on Japanese knotweed

 Wasp

 Assassin bug on asters

 Striped cucumber beetle on asters

 Today the mushroom had been knocked down and partly eaten.

 There were ants on it, cutting away at it, but I don't think that in less than 24 hours they could have done so much damage, so something else probably knocked it over and chomped it, and the ants just moved in afterward.

 There are a few beetles in the book that look like this, so I don't know what it is, other than some kind of leaf beetle.

 Buffalo tree hopper

 Crane fly

 Mesmerizing eyes!

 There's quite a gathering of leaf-footed bugs on this tree. There are 5 here...

 Oh, look, and here come another one!

 Sawfly larvae

And there's a growing gathering of white hickory tussock moth caterpillars on the crab apple tree.

Moth

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I found this tiny spider on the same tree where I found all those tiny bugs yesterday.

 This wasp was crawling all over the wall of the back porch, dragging this spider. It was doing that for quite some time; I spotted it, took pictures, mowed the lawn, and then saw it still doing that. I have no idea why.

 Marbled orb weaver with prey again