Eggs For Breakfast

Last autumn, or maybe it was late last summer, I found some insect eggs on the branch of an oak tree. They were pretty big for insect eggs, which made sense when I found out that they were katydid eggs; some katydids are pretty big insects (for this part of the world, anyway). Since spring arrived I have been keeping an eye on them, checking each day to see if they have hatched, even on days when it was raining and I wasn't doing a bug walk. I figured that they would probably not hatch until there were leaves on the tree, because it would make sense that they hatch when there is something to eat. The tree has leaves now, so every day I hope to see some katydid nymphs on the tree branch, even if I don't have the good luck to actually see them hatching. And today... they were gone. It is possible that they hatched and moved away, but there is no bit of the egg cases (shells?) left on the branch, and I didn't see ANY katydid nymphs on the branch or others nearby. My guess is that something ate them. I have been waiting for WEEKS (well, months, really, since last autumn) for these eggs to hatch, and something EATS them right around the time it could have happened. I am... disappointed. It was that kind of day.

BUT! This is what my backyard looks like now. Spring came slowly, and then all of a sudden everything is green:

My bug walk was very disorganized today, because it was combined with a tour of the poison ivy in the backyard; my husband came along with the poison ivy spray and I pointed out to him all the places I knew where it was growing. Which is a lot of places. My live-and-let-live policy for nature does not apply to poison ivy. It is quite virulent this year.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 A click beetle, looking rather majestic.

Other Bugs:

 It was this kind of day–I couldn't get close enough to bugs to photograph them. This is a very pretty moth, though this photo doesn't exactly demonstrate that.

I tried to get better pictures of yesterday's Backyard Bug of the Day (was it yesterday?), with the ants attending to them. I didn't get better pictures, but I think this one is kind of funny.

Tiny looper caterpillar

I partially mowed the lawn today, the first time this year. I ran out of time before I could finish, which was probably a relief to all the grass spiders living in it–I was enough that I don't even remember how many I saw. A number of them ran out of the grass onto the various rocks in the backyard when I got close with the mower, and that was the source of a couple of my pictures for Arachnid Appreciation:
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