The Bugs in the Backyard: It's A Bug Eat Bug World

I am no biologist or naturalist, as I have pointed out before, but I have the kind of knowledge about nature that you pick up in school and by watching a lot of nature documentaries. For instance, with mammals I have learned that you can tell if an animal is a predator or prey by things like the orientation of their eyes: predators, needing binocular vision in order to have the depth perception necessary to capture prey, have their eyes facing forward. Prey animals, who need to be able to see a wide area around them in order to know if a predator is coming for them, have eyes more on the sides of their heads, to give them a more panoramic view of the world. Foxes have eyes that face forward. Rabbits have eyes on the sides, so they can see the foxes coming. It's hard to sneak up on a rabbit. I have tried.
I don't have this kind of information about insects, though. There are a lot of insects that I know are predators, pollinators, scavengers, herbivores, and so on, but I can't look at an insect I have never seen before and know what it eats. I am getting better and better at identifying what order they are in, and can usually tell, for instance, if something is a Hemiptera. And if I know it is a Hemiptera, I know how it eats, because I know that what makes it a Hemiptera is in part its mouth parts, which are designed for piercing and sucking. But some of them use those mouth parts to pierce and suck plants, and some of them use those mouth parts for piercing and sucking other insects (or sometimes other animals). I can't tell by looking at a Hemiptera which category they fit into. Nor can I tell with beetles. And the only reason that I know that dragonflies are predatory is because, well, I know that they are predatory, I have read it enough, and even seen it enough. But the first time I ever looked at one, I had no idea, and even now I couldn't tell you if there is anything in their appearance that indicates that they are predators.

In many cases I find out what an insect eats simply by seeing it eating. This is, after all, how I know that there are some insects that eat bird poop (and I kind of wish I didn't know that. And now maybe you wish you didn't know that, either, and if that is the case, then I apologize. I know you can't unread what you just read). And this is the case for the anchor bug:

I found out last week that the anchor bug is a predator, because I saw it feeding on milkweed tussock moth caterpillars. Today I found another doing the same thing, but on much smaller ones.

Clear view of the piercing mouth part with a tiny caterpillar on it.

It also got another caterpillar stuck on it, hanging from a silk thread, which caterpillars use as a safety line. Not that hanging on a safety line from a predator is safe...

These caterpillars have done quite a job on that leaf since yesterday.

And now for more predation:

How could that charmer be a ruthless predator?

All kidding aside, is there something about this face that would tell an entomologist who for some reason knew noting about dragonflies that this is a predator?

Something about the eyes, maybe? I don't know.

Just look at that winning smile!

So charming!

So friendly!

So–what's that you have in your mouth?

This dragonfly was extremely accommodating, as you can see, but what you can't tell from the pictures is that while I was taking them, the dragonfly would flit away and back again, hunting for prey. It would come back with a bug sticking out of its mouth. Once it came back and...

... I could tell that it had caught a leaf hopper...

... but it still had another insect in its mouth. It caught the leaf hopper while it was already eating some kind of fly.

Today I may have seen more than 7 species of butterflies. I am not sure, because I didn't get a good look at some of them, but I saw a monarch, an eastern tiger swallowtail, another species of swallowtail (or perhaps a female eastern, some of them are black instead of yellow, and dark swallowtails are hard to tell apart even when I get a good look), I think a red spotted purple, a comma or question mark (I always enjoy the irony of not knowing if it was a question mark), and...

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Possibly a spring azure?

And Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Common wood nymph. This is a new species for me. It's not a good picture, really, but it's better than the other ones I got of this butterfly:

Here's the comma or question mark. I didn't get pictures of any of the others, and there were a few butterflies that flew by too fast for me to get any idea at all what they were, so there could have been more than 7.

Lepidoptera abounded this week, in adult and caterpillar form. In addition to the monarchs and the milkweed tussock moth caterpillars, there have been a few random other species (including a lot of loopers I saw on the black-eyed Susans that I didn't take pictures of because I get tired of the same things all the time).

It drives me crazy when I know the name of something and can't think of it...

Today I confirmed that the little caterpillars congregating on a milkweed leaf were, indeed, early instar milkweed tussock moth caterpillars:

They were in various stages of molting, and got their new look with their new skin. Note a few discarded skins.

Meanwhile, the other brood had a new leaf to eat:

They are crowded onto both sides of the leaf. I don't really get how that works, but obviously they get along a lot better than the monarchs do.

A few of them have ventured out alone.

The two big monarch caterpillars were still eating at around 1:00, but when I went out to do my bug walk later, I could not find them:

It would seem that they finished their last meal as caterpillars and wandered away to pupate. I wish I knew where they had gone to do that. My hypothesis for the reason they do that is because if they stay on the plant where they have been eating, another caterpillar may eat the leaf they are attached to, and then they will fall. Obviously, they don't think about this, it's just instinct, but that may be the reason for it.

Flower beetle on purple coneflower

Sweat bee

Beetle

Plant hopper

Male scorpionfly

I found a couple of bees on my new acres:

I have been keeping an eye on these eggs, which I think (thought?) are lacewing eggs, and though they darkened in color several days ago, which I thought was a prelude to hatching, I have not seen any tiny lacewing larvae. Today I saw that the eggs had all been opened, and there were several really tiny insects (Wasps? Gnats?) crawling on the eggs. Insects aren't born with wings, so they could not have just hatched out of there. I have no idea what the explanation is for this. However...

A while back I found a caterpillar in the process of becoming a chrysalis. Once it had done so, I brought the chrysalis inside and put it inside a vase (the top of which I covered with paper towel), so I could see what emerged. Well...