The Bugs' Buffet

Like I keep saying, I think the real law of nature is that if there is something to eat, there will be something to eat it. So, I provided blooming flowers in my yard, which have nectar and pollen to eat, and there are insects coming along to feed there (and only one of the plants is in bloom at the moment).

Insects on Chrysanthemums:

 Flower fly

 Another species of flower fly (I did try looking these up, but there are many species, and they are all quite similar).

 Mosquito. Okay, not every pollinator is wonderful. But not all mosquitoes bite, either. Many of them (males of most species, I think), eat only flower nectar.

 Sweat bee

 Hover fly

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Treehopper. Possibly Telamona gemma. Or maybe Telamona molaris.

The Order of the Day would definitely have to be Hemiptera; most of the bugs I found were from this order, which means they really ARE bugs, not just insects, because the order Hemiptera are called True Bugs:

 Lots of candy striped leaf hoppers sunning themselves on leaves.

 Another leaf hopper

 Don't know what this one is.

There were a lot of stinkbugs around, specifically green stinkbugs:

There's a candy striped leaf hopper in this shot, too, but you probably can't see it very well because it's out of focus (upper left, if you want to look for it).

 It's probably obvious to you, but this one was tricky to spot at the time. It is sharing its plant with another insect that was plentiful today, a ladybeetle.

 Different vantage point.

 Leaf footed bug missing a leg.

 I'm not sure if this is a western conifer seedbug or not.

My biggest surprise today:

 Comma butterfly

 So different on the other side of its wings.

 Twice-stabbed ladybeetle

 There were still a few rove beetles hanging out on their rock.

 White hickory tussock moth caterpillar

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I think I have mentioned before that one way for spiders to get around it to send out a line of silk on the wind and let the wind carry it to attach somewhere, and then the spider can walk across it. That is what this spider is doing here...

 ... and here, which is the point where I realized the thread was attaching to me and my monopod. I had to redirect the spider when it began to walk across.

Still trying. I am not sure if spiders have a particular destination in mind when they do this, but it's pretty much up to the wind.

Here you can see the thread.

 Here's its neighbor on the wilted morning glory. I wonder if these two spiders are the ones (two of them, anyway) that were facing off on this vine last week.

 Tiny spiderling...

 

 Flower crab spider hiding in autumn joy sedum

 I didn't notice when I took its picture, but the spider was not alone...