Something to Look Forward To

The heat wave continues, but since it was cooler today (or rather, less sweltering–only 93ºF instead of 98ºF), I did go out for a bug walk. Two, actually.

The Backyard Bug of the Day today is something I actually went looking for knowing there was a possibility that I would find it right where I expected. Yesterday evening my husband told me that when he went out to water the tomatoes in the garden there was a monarch butterfly on the milkweed plants there (we only planted a few tomato plants this year, using less than half of the garden, so when the milkweed sprouted in the other half, we just let it grow instead of pulling it out like we would do if we were trying to grow zucchini there), so he suggested that there might be monarch eggs there. So, I went out there and found one. Backyard Bug of the Day:

Just to recap for those who don't know, monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants; it is the exclusive food of monarch caterpillars. It is toxic, but not to the monarch caterpillar, and eating it makes them toxic too for anything that eats them.

It's tiny, so let's take a closer look so you can see how pretty it is:

 I has a bit of a pearlescent sheen to it and it quite lovely.

Before I get to the bugs from my two bug walks today, last night, you may recall, I found all my bugs for the day out on the porch. I left the porch light on after that, and after midnight, which made it today, I happened to see this on the screen door:

 Here's what it looks like from the other side–when I went outside to get a look at this side it flew from the door to the wall.

The wall was crowded with insects:

 And this is only a tiny portion of it.

Here are a few of the bugs that were out there:

 This made it into yesterday's blog, but after midnight I got a better picture.

 Midge, I think.

 Leaf hopper

Moth and leaf hopper

Now for the daytime:

A rather battered eastern tiger swallowtail. Male, I think. Whatever of blue was on the hind wings is gone now, but if it was female I think there would be blue on what is left.

 Do you see the lady beetle? I didn't when I took the picture, only when I looked at it on the computer.

Still a lot of bees on the milkweed flowers:

 And the silver spot skipper is back.

 Buffalo tree hopper nymph

 The most uncooperative butterfly ever. Or a small wood satyr.

I look for this caterpillar by the front walk every day, and today it was not on the plant where it was yesterday–it was back on the other plant, whose flowers it had already eaten. It was nibbling on a stem...

 Then later it was back on the other plant, the one that still has flowers. Note the aphids there, too.

 Banded longhorn beetle

 I spotted this little beetle and tried to get a picture of it, but it moved, so I couldn't get a good shot. I tried to steady the leaf it was on, and it pulled that annoying beetle trick and dropped off the leaf...

 ... it landed in a spider web on the leaf below. I very meanly felt that it served it right, which I then felt bad about. It got away, though–here it is pulling itself away from the threads (which you cannot see).
Actually, I don't like to take sides in the spider vs. insect battle. It is not for me to say whether insects deserve to get away, or spiders deserve to eat. It's a system, and I stay out of it.

 Walking away.

 This caterpillar was dangling from a thread and I walked right into it. It dropped to the grass to get away from me.

 I have a favorite species of lady beetle, and this is it: Brachiacantha ursina.

 I spotted this little moth dangling from a milkweed flower and assumed that it was the victim of some predatory insect or spider.

 I nudged it to see if I could spot the predator and it started fluttering madly. There was no predator there.

 

 I realized that its antenna was stuck in the flower. I gently removed it. It did not say thank you.

 I think this is a fall webworm caterpillar

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I have been seeing a lot of tiny, black, triangular spiders lately, particularly in one area of the backyard. I tried looking them up to find out what they were, but I couldn't find anything like them. They looked to me like arrow-shaped micrathena spiders, but black and without the spines. Well, they've been around for a while now, and it appears that they were spiderlings, and have gotten bigger, and developed spines, and changed color... and are arrow-shaped micrathena spiders. This is why I wish insect and spider guides would show different life stages of the subjects. A lot of them look different when they are young...er.