Expansion

Today was a momentous day in my backyard, not because of anything I found, particularly, but because a 20-year dream has come true, and today we were able to expand our backyard. Now instead of 1.155 acres, my backyard is almost 36 acres. We bought the land adjacent to our property, and now we own a field, and a lot more woods, and what that means is we have a lot more insect habitat. Of course, I am not going to wander over 36 acres every day on my bug walks, and right now I can't really walk around the new acres much at all, because a lot of it is covered with invasive thickets, but someday...

And here is the first bug picture I took on my new land today:

Also the only bug picture from my new land today.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Monarch butterfly! Finally, I got some decent pictures of a monarch. This one is a female. She spent some time feeding from the milkweed, and I believe she laid a number of eggs. You can see that her wings are kind of worn out. There were at least two monarchs in the backyard today, so I am not sure that all of these pictures are the same one.

 I find this one funny for some reason.

 

 

 And I guess part of Backyard Bug of the Day is the other stages of life (other than pupation):

 Newly hatched monarch today!

 Just found this one today in the milkweed patch on the back lawn.

These two will be ready to pupate soon:

 Other Bugs:

 Bees on milkweed

 Milkweed tussock moth caterpillars.

  I don't know why this caterpillar is bald on the sides...

 Looking at this egg today, I saw the tiny insects inside move! I did not see it emerge, though.

 This garden patch was full of bees and wasps. This is all I got, though.

 Skipper

 I think this is a cuckoo wasp.

 Bees are now converging on the goldenrod.

 Caterpillar

 Baby stinkbugs

 Wasp

 Wasp

 Flies mating

 Perhaps milkweed tussock moth caterpillars

 Lady beetle larva

 Fly

 One of the things I love about purple coneflowers is the number of insects attracted to the flowers. Yesterday it was beetles and moths, today it was bees.

 

Arachnid Appreciation:

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 I found this jumping spiderling dangling from my hair.

 

 Jumping spider