Indecisive

Based on the weather forecast I wasn't expecting to be able to do a bug walk today, but it didn't rain, and the sun actually came out for a while, so I went out, and so did about a million bugs. Mostly bees and wasps. There were a lot of butterflies, too. And high concentrations of Orthoptera in one area. I even saw two beetles (I don't have pictures of them), which have been weirdly absent from my bug walks for a while now. There was also revolting humidity, to the point where I had to wipe the lens and viewfinder of my camera because I walked out of the cool house with my cool camera into the warm humidity and it fogged up immediately.
Here's the mood I am in today, though: I don't want to make decisions. I have so much going on, so much I have to figure out right now, that I just couldn't choose a Backyard Bug of the Day. I don't even want to do co-bugs of the day, so when I posted on my facebook page I posted 3 very different insects and told people to choose their own. Not as a competition, it's not about voting, it's just that I am letting people decide among 3 insects which one suits them for today. So... Here are the choices, whichever one you personally like best in the Backyard Bug of the Day.

Backyard Bug of the Day? #1:

It's a fly, perhaps a fruit fly or flower fly, I could not find it in my book.

If it had been more cooperative it could have just been Backyard Bug of the Day outright.

However, it was not cooperative.

Backyard Bug of the Day? #2:

Red-banded hairstreak butterfly.

As usual with hairstreaks, I got only a glimpse of the dorsal side of the wing, as it shifted its wings back and forth. It appears to be a blue/gray on the other side.

The best look I got, though, was when the butterfly was too far away for a good picture, so here it is magnified.

Backyard Bug of the Day? #3:

I actually went out looking for this today. A couple of days ago I took a picture of a wasp on this leaf, and in that picture there was something that looked a bit like a tiny, red-orange larva. But since I was focused on the wasp, I didn't get a close-up look at the larva thing. So today, I went back to see if I could find it. And in fact there were two of these tiny larvae on the leaf (milkweed, in case you're wondering). I don't know what they are, and they are small enough that I didn't notice them the other day, and would not have noticed them today if I wasn't looking for them. They are big enough to see with the naked eye, but they don't look like anything notable. I am curious to see if they will stick around long enough to get bigger and maybe be identifiable.

Back on the subject of butterflies...

When I looked out this morning I saw that the butterfly I released yesterday was no longer on the back porch tree and figured that it had finally flown away and all was well. But when I went out for my bug walk, I stepped off the back porch steps and noticed something fluttering near my feet. It was yesterday's monarch butterfly. It is a very recognizable butterfly because of the deformed wings. I was dismayed to see him there. He flew a little bit, but not well. I picked him up to move him out of the wet grass and he flew from my hand, but clumsily. He flew a few short flights from plant to plant, none of them very strong flights, so I was worried about him. I didn't think he had any chance of being able to fly to Mexico–he didn't seem like he could even fly across the backyard. It occurred to me that he might be hungry; he had eclosed about 36 hours earlier and spent all day yesterday in one spot. So I tried to move him to a part of the backyard that has flowers, thinking he might be able to get some energy for flight.

I was going to put him on the autumn joy sedum, but when I got close to that garden bed he flew to this goldenrod plant.

He stayed there the whole time I was outside doing my bug walk, which was about an hour and a half. He was flexing his wings, which seemed like a good sign. Once when I went to check on him he kind of... fell, I guess, off the plant, and I scooped him back up and put him back. His wings don't look good, they're kind of saggy. However, when I went to check on him about an hour after I finished my bug walk he was gone. I looked around for him, on the ground and in the flower bed where he had been, and I didn't see him, so I am optimistic that he was finally able to fly. I think being in the sun probably helped; it was chilly yesterday and last night, and the back porch gets no sunshine, so maybe he just needed to warm up. And maybe he did finally feed on some flowers and get some energy. Anyway, either he flew away or something ate him, and whichever it was, nature has taken its course.

The autumn joy sedum was very popular today:

Several kinds of bees and wasps were there.

Sometimes they get along well enough to share plants.

And hover flies

Of course, with all of that potential prey, there was an assassin bug on one of the plants.

It didn't catch this bumblebee, though.

As I mentioned, I saw quite a few butterflies today. I didn't get pictures of all of them; the cabbage white I only saw through the window, and the mourning cloak got away too fast. But there were others, in addition to the monarch and the red-banded hairstreak:

Pearl crescent. I've seen them frequently lately.

The eastern tailed blue.

But today I got a peek at the pretty blue on the dorsal side of the wings!

In the rock garden there were Orthoptera galore; within about two feet of each other I found:

a cricket...

... a couple of grasshoppers... (There were a LOT of grasshoppers in the rock garden. Walking around there was like walking in a popcorn popper. And there were about 8 or 10 of them basking in the sunshine on the side of the house).

... and a katydid.

There were a LOT of crickets, which I knew just because I hear them, especially at night if I have the window open. This cricket just... deposited that black thing on the rock.

I found this moth in the rock garden, too. And there were a lot of ants. The rock garden was teeming with insects today.

So was the Japanese knotweed:

It's a horrible picture, but it works for what I am trying to illustrate, that there were insects all over these plants. Bees, wasps, flies of a variety of species (including the BBotD above, which was photographed on the Japanese knotweed).

Also a lady beetle

A tachinid fly, one of the MANY species of flies on the Japanese knotweed.

And another.

It was very crowded, but there are a lot of flowers on these plants, so there's enough for everyone.

Other Bugs:

Caterpillar dangling above the path:

Banded tussock moth, a more yellow variant, but the same species as the grey ones I have been seeing lately, I think.

I found another one, too, of the same color.

The goldenrod was host to a lot of insects today, too. Mostly bees and wasps.

This is one of my all-time favorite insects:

 It was NOT cooperative today, though.

 Cuckoo wasp. I love that it looks like it's made up of emeralds and sapphires.

 White hickory tussock moth caterpillar.

Arachnid Appreciation:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Jumping spider

Arrow shaped micrathena with prey

Bowl and doily spider with a web still wet from the rain

This is the first time I have seen the funnel web spider out on her web, I think, instead of in her lair, and it looks like she's got some prey, but I can't tell what it is.

I spotted this tiny spider dangling from a web that I thought was covered with water droplets...

But it wasn't water droplets, it was spiderlings!

[Edit: December 31, 2018]:
Going through pictures to make calendars, I found this little scenario that I didn't post when I wrote this blog post, probably because I did not notice the tiny, interesting, important detail:

 

 I am assuming that I did not post this picture three months ago when I wrote this blog post because it's not a good picture of the spider. I did not notice at the time that there is an insect on the spider's back.

 It looks like a tiny wasp. I think there are some wasps that are parasitic on spiders, and perhaps this one is laying an egg in/on the spider?