Dragonflies Are Our Friends

I used to be afraid of dragonflies. Not for any good reason, and I had never heard that horrifying folklore that they have the alternate name of sewing needles because they will stitch your mouth shut (why would anyone ever believe that?), but I used to think pretty much all bugs were icky, and dragonflies are big, and I think I had some kind of assumption that most bugs want to bite you. A bug that big must have a ferocious bite, right? So of course they're scary! (They don't bite. I just want to clear that up). I don't know. I vaguely recall that what started to win me over was hearing that they eat a lot of mosquitoes. And then there's all those Tiffany lamps that made them look so pretty. And now that I have actually spent time looking at them, and seen that they always look like they are smiling, I can't help but think they are charming. And there's that thing about eating mosquitoes... So today when we were working in the garden and there were dragonflies zooming around us, I was happy to see them. I hope they found lots of bugs to eat. I wish that at some point today, while I was working or during my bug walk, I had been able to photograph one, but they were not in the mood for that.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I looked this up, and was only able to narrow it down to either a black fly, or a fruit fly.

 It kept jabbing its back end into the leaf; perhaps it was laying eggs?

Other Bugs:

 Shield bug, leaf bug, something like that. Order Hemiptera, anyway.

 Pearl crescent butterfly

Almost all of the white marked tussock moth caterpillars have dispersed:

 Almost.

 Green stinkbug

 Sawfly larvae

 Another species of sawfly larvae. These are obviously much younger. The more you look at this picture, the more of them you see.

I have read about some species of ants that will raid ant colonies of other species and run off with their eggs/larvae/pupae and make them slaves to do the work in their own colony. Today I think I saw that in action:

 I saw a lot of ants running down a tree trunk with what looked like eggs or larvae in their mouths. They were running really fast down the tree, much faster than I usually see.

 Later I saw a different species, on a different tree, that also looked like they were carrying away eggs or larvae.

 Hover fly

 I know this is out of focus, but look at the lower right and you can see the bug that chased away this hoverfly a moment after I took this shot.

 Beetle

 Another adult assassin bug

 Some kind of midge, maybe, and notice the random insect leg on the leaf.

There were quite a lot of bugs on the front porch when we got home this evening, but most of them flew away as soon as I got my camera.

 I think this is a firefly. It did not light up, though, and I couldn't get a good look underneath to see if that's what it was. I got a glimpse, though, and I do think this is a firefly.

Grape leaf roller moth

I just realized I didn't get any spider pictures today...