For some reason, today's bug walk was a complete waste of time. Well, nearly complete. There were a few bugs. But I had to depend on the porch light for a Backyard Bug of the Day today.
Backyard Bug of the Day:
Katydid. I think this is the first adult I have seen this summer.
I might as well continue with the other porch bugs:
There is a tomato plant on the porch, and this little critter was on the tomato plant.
There was a bit of a Porch Light Lepidoptera Lollapalooza going on tonight. There were many species, mostly really tiny, several male gypsy moths (ugh), and it was generally very mothy:
I think this is a moth fly, which is actually not a moth, but a fly. And really tiny.
Moths:
This fly has gorgeous wings! It wouldn't sit still for pictures, or for me to get a good look at it, but it looks like it might have a parasite attached to its body.
As for the bugs from my bug walk:
The viceroy-or-red-spotted-purple chrysalis has a bend in it again. Chrysalides do react to stimuli, so maybe something alarmed it.
A couple of very different larvae:
Fall webworm caterpillar, and whatever that weird, fuzzy thing is (which I think is a sawfly larva of some kind).
Honey bee on milkweed
Weevil
Beetle. It flared its antennae at me.
I have been trying for a while to get a good picture of this, but they never seem to come out. I don't even remember if I have posted it, because the pictures have been so bad. I think this is a brown hooded owlet moth caterpillar. It is the smallest I have ever seen, and it only has the black and yellow stripes, not the red and orange, so my guess is that it develops those colors in later instars, or it is a totally different species.
This plant for weeks was home to several buffalo tree hoppers. Today all I could find was this. These always seem like insect ghosts to me, but in reality they are insect skeletons–exoskeletons.
Arachnid Appreciation:
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My guess is that this is a male arrow-shaped micrathena spider.
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