Emergence

I have been expecting a butterfly to eclose (emerge from the chrysalis) either yesterday or today, and today, hurrah! one did!
It was not, however the butterfly I was expecting.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 No, none of the monarchs in my dining room have eclosed, but I found a newly emerged viceroy butterfly in my backyard! Sightings of viceroy butterflies in my backyard are rare (although it is possible that I have seen them zooming by and assumed that they were monarchs, because they look very similar), and coincidentally twice when I have seen them (including today) it has been when they have just emerged from their chrysalis.

So, how did I know this had just eclosed?

When I first spotted it, it was awkwardly climbing the stem of a goldenrod plant:

 

 Butterflies can fly. They don't need to climb awkwardly among leaves. Except, perhaps if they have never flown before and aren't ready?

I took a look lower down on the stem of the plant and found:

 The chrysalis it had just emerged from. If you look closely along the edge of the brown bit on the lower left I think you can see the part where it cracked open. It is slightly possible that this butterfly was the viceroy caterpillar I found a couple of weeks ago. I posted pictures of it a couple of times about two weeks ago, and then it disappeared, and I figured it had gone off to pupate. The tree where it was feeding is about 20 feet away from where this butterfly eclosed. I don't know how far they will wander to find a pupation spot, but I don't think that's very far, so it is entirely feasible, based on the distance and the time frame.

The great thing about newly eclosed butterflies is that they don't/can't fly away, so you can take close-up pictures of them:

 

 This was a pretty exciting find for me today!

This is the butterfly I was expecting to eclose today. It will be coming out tomorrow, which I can tell from the fact that you can see it through the pupal case. This picture was taken in the early evening, and it continued to become less green and more monarch butterfly colored as the evening went on.

I found another cooperative(ish) butterfly today:

Pearl crescent. You can tell from the shape its wings are in that it has been around the block a few times. Or around the backyard. The amazing thing about butterflies is that they are so delicate, but so tough as well; they can take that kind of damage (and I have seen worse) and continue to fly and thrive.

Stepping on a tumbling flower beetle.

And speaking of stepping on other insects:

Bumblebee on autumn joy sedum...

Assassin bug on autumn joy sedum...

Bumblebee on assassin bug on autumn joy sedum. The bee is lucky that the assassin bug didn't manage to grab it, which it looked like it tried to do. At any rate, the assassin bug seemed to feel some consternation about the whole thing, but I don't know if it was because it missed the chance at a meal or because a big bug landed on top of it.

Perhaps the bugs in the backyard felt bad about wasting my time yesterday, and being generally scarce all week, because they were plentiful today in my backyard. Or maybe it is just because the heat wave broke and it was a much more comfortable day. Other Bugs:

Stinkbug nymph

I think this is an arcigera flower moth, which is in the family Noctuidae, or owlet moths. I have never figured out what makes an owlet moth an owlet moth. I rarely even bother to try to identify moths, but tonight I figured I'd give this one a go, as it looks kind of distinctive, not just one of a million brown moths. There were one on the front porch last night, but I didn't get a good enough picture to post, so I was happy to find this one today "in the wild," which is always better for a picture than the siding on my house.

I found this in the ailanthus webworm web where I have seen a couple of moths this week that were newly eclosed:

I would say this is about a medium-sized ailanthus webworm caterpillar...

... and this is a tiny one, but bigger than it was the other day when I only noticed it in the background of a picture I took of a moth. It's curious that there are different stages of caterpillars, AND pupae, AND newly emerged moths in the same web. I really need to read up on this moth's life cycle.

Leaf hopper.

Tiny crane fly. Or some kind of fly, anyway.

The life of a cicada is short once it becomes an adult.

Looper caterpillar

Fall webworm caterpillar

And another

This is a pokeweed flower. If you don't know what pokeweeds are like, their flowers are very small, like maybe a quarter of an inch–probably less. So you can imagine how small that little critter is.

I think it's a thrips.

Flies

This caterpillar was using silk to attach leaves together:

It would move its body back and forth, stringing lines of silk between the leaves; you can see a couple of the places it had already done, along with the part it was working on.

Wasp

Leaf footed bug

The Japanese knotweed is in bloom, and attracting a lot of insects:

Honeybee

Fly

Fly

Assassin bug

I went out this evening just as it was getting dark to get some milkweed for my dining room caterpillars, and it was too dim for me to see well, so I missed that there were these two tree crickets on the plant I chose until they dropped to the ground in front of me:

I did check, there were no other insects lurking on the leaves.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Turning on a Light

Some days it's just not worth going outside. Well, from a bug hunting standpoint. There are lots of other great things about going outside. Maybe not as many when the weather is this gross, but still, I am not going to advocate staying in the house all the time. So, my bug walk was a waste of time. Eating my lunch outside (when the temperature dropped a few degrees) was quite nice.

However, I had to turn on the porch light tonight in the hopes of finding a good bug to be Backyard Bug of the Day. Lately the porch light has not been all that attractive to bugs, so I didn't have a LOT of hope, but it paid off for me this time.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 I think this is a new species of planthopper for me. I'm so glad I turned on the porch light! Possibly species Telamona salvini.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 A moth with a really lovely pattern. It could be a new species, too, but with moths it's really hard to tell.

There were a LOT of bugs attracted to the porch light tonight:

8 in this shot. They were mostly very small. Tiny, even. And mostly flying around in the way that you keep your mouth closed so you don't inhale one (which my husband did when he went out on the porch earlier), and hope they don't all fly in the house when you open the door.

Many different orders were represented; this picture shows Diptera and Lepidoptera, but there were also Hemiptera, Coleoptera, Orthoptera, Arachnids...

Moth and leaf hopper. Both tiny; the leaf hopper is about an eighth of an inch, maybe.

 There were several cool moths, mostly not in places where I could get pictures of them.

 Plant bug

 Meanwhile, inside the house:

 When I got up this morning the caterpillar with bad judgement in pupating locations had successfully become a chrysalis. When the current caterpillars have moved on I will remove this part of the rack and put it somewhere where it will have room to emerge.

 I know it's pointless to post a picture of this caterpillar to say what I want to say about it... or maybe not, if you look at yesterday's post you can probably see a difference... Anyway, this is the "hatchling" caterpillar, and I swear it doubled in size since last night. That probably means it molted, and it did spend a lot of time yesterday just sitting in one spot, so that checks out.

Note how few things I have to show you in Other Bugs today:

 Bumblebee on autumn joy sedum

 Assassin bugs

Here's another lurking among the goldenrod, waiting for one of the many unsuspecting insects that like to feed on the plant.

Don't worry, this huge tachinid fly (which would have been BBotD if it had agreed to sit still for better pictures) did not become prey.

 This is a tiny pupal case made by a tinier caterpillar out of pieces it has cut out of a leaf and attached together with silk, and then attached to a tree with more silk.

 Some other kind of chrysalis. About a quarter of an inch long.

 Tree cricket

 I have been seeing a lot of hover flies lately, but have been unsuccessful in getting pictures of any. Until today.

 Very young assassin bug nymph. Obviously not the same species as above. I don't know the real name of it, but in my mind I think of this as the umbrella assassin because when they feel threatened they pull their legs in around them and they look like the ribs of a partially folded umbrella. But that's just me.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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