A Lovely Summer Day

Today was the kind of day that lets me understand why people say that summer is their favorite season. Later this week when we start a heat wave I will go back to being mystified that people can enjoy the misery that is July, but today was a lovely day.

Today also featured a lot of large bugs zooming past me as I walked around the backyard. Some of them I was able to get a closer look at, and even photograph, but others buzzed by and disappeared. It's very frustrating as a person who is trying to see what's out there to be teased with a glimpse of something interesting in my peripheral vision, hearing more than seeing what went past. Some were cooperative, though, like Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 This flew past me, zoomed around for a while, and then landed on the underside of a leaf of a tomato plant in the vegetable garden. Then it sat very patiently while I took pictures of it.

 It's a pretty big beetle, about an inch long.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 I think this is a Virginia ctenucha moth, on black-eyed Susan.

Other Bugs:

 A couple of leaf hoppers on milkweed

 Ants on zucchini blossom in the vegetable garden

 The leaf damage on this leaf has about doubled since yesterday...

 ... but when I turned it over, I saw that the caterpillars had dispersed, and there were only a few still on the leaf.

 Elsewhere in the backyard, on another milkweed plant, I found a leaf with the beginnings of the same kind of insect damage...

 ... and underneath were some tiny, newly hatched caterpillars. I believe that is their egg mass that they hatched from.

 Flower fly

These are the eggs I watched being oviposited by a stinkbug yesterday:

And these are some other kind of insect eggs:

 Leaf-footed bug nymph

 Scarlet lily beetle? Funny that this would show up when I just mentioned it the other day. I haven't seen one in years.

I was taking a picture of a vine and noticed something tiny moving around on it:

 Some kind of newly hatched insect nymph, I would guess.

 Candy striped leaf hoppers

 Robber fly

I saw a LOT of butterflies today, mostly small wood satyrs, all extremely uncooperative. One (either a comma or a question mark) landed right in front of my, paused for second as if it was going to let me get a picture, and then flew away before I could even point my camera at it. I must have seen at least 20 small wood satyrs...

 ... and this is the only one I got a picture of.

 Looks like something ate a hole in this leaf and then became a pupa on it.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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