Bug Watching

I didn't find a lot of bugs on my bug walk today–the weather has turned hot again–but I did enjoy watching butterflies and wasps living their insect lives while I sat on the back porch step after spending some time doing yard work (which I must be crazy for doing on such a hot day). Most of the time when I am interacting with insects it is to photograph them, but it's good to sometimes just sit and watch them. There's no way I could ever have photographed an eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly chasing a monarch butterfly, but it was a fun thing to just see. So if you are reading this blog because you think insects are cool, I am glad to have you here, but I hope that sometimes you go outside and just watch them in the real world.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I don't know what this is, though it looks like some kind of fly. Actually, it looks like a giant midge, but I don't think there is such a thing. [Edit: I looked it up, and I think it is a midge. And there are midges this big]

 Tucking it's head like that makes for awkward photography.

Other Bugs:

 I saw several monarchs today, including a female laying eggs, and I continue to find tiny monarch caterpillars–including this new one I found today. I don't keep finding these same caterpillars after they are a few days old, though, which could just be because they are tiny and hard to see, and moving to different leaves. But it does make me worry that they are not surviving past a couple of days. I am still questioning whether I should adopt them and raise them indoors.

Other than the baby above, this was the only monarch caterpillar I found today:

 

 I have been following its progress, and I think that probably tomorrow or the next day it will wander off to find a place to pupate.

 

 

 A curiosity: the other clutch of what I think are lacewing eggs also has a tiny fly/wasp/I-don't-know crawling all over it, like the one I posted about yesterday.

 Wasp on goldenrod

 Beetle

 Caterpillar. At first I thought this was something else, something that is not an insect.

 What I am calling Brood #2 of the milkweed tussock moth caterpillars are taking on a leaf together today. I could not find Brood #3...

... and all I found of Brood #1 was this caterpillar and another that was crawling on the side of the house.

 

 Leaf hopper

 Male monarch butterfly. How do I know this is a male?

That spot.

I've been hearing cicadas for a while, but I haven't seen any–I rarely see them, not even once a year, because they spend most of their lives underground, and their brief adult period in trees. But today I found this:

Discarded exoskeleton from a cicada as it molted into its adult form. It looks like it is covered in dirt, which I assume is from having crawled out from underground before molting. I wish I had seen it happen.

 You can see the slit in the back from where it crawled out of its old skin.

 I found this pair of moths on the storm door this evening.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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For a moment it seemed like this spider was going to go after the caterpillar, but it didn't.

Orchard spider wrapping leaf hopper prey in silk.