Time to Learn

Today I started taking an online course about insects, just because I can. So far it's just been introductory stuff, and I haven't learned anything yet, but I did very well on the pre-test to see how much I already know. Of course, there were only 11 questions, and a couple of them were really opinions, not knowledge (like how do I feel about bugs?), so it didn't really capture either the scope of my knowledge or the even greater scope of my ignorance. I look forward to learning more about bugs from this, though.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 Finally! A monarch caterpillar!

Do you remember that I posted a picture of these insect eggs yesterday? And I posted another of a single egg that looked like it might be the same kind of egg, but further developed inside? Well, I found these again today, but when I looked for the other one, I could not find it. I knew roughly where it had been, but not on which exact milkweed plant; however, I should have been able to find it again...

What I found instead, on the plant where I thought the egg should be was this bug, Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 It is some kind of Hemiptera nymph. It could be an assassin bug, but it also looks a lot like the nymph of the leaf-footed bug, but a different color. And it struck me that given what I could see through the egg yesterday, this could be what was inside of it. And yet, this seems way too big to have been inside of that egg. Still, I do wonder...

That bug looks a lot like this bug:

 Assassin bug nymph. On black-eyed Susan. It's definitely a good place for a predatory insect, given how popular those flowers are right now.

 I think this is a spittle bug.

 Plant bug

 Still a lot of looper caterpillars on the black-eyed Susans. So very many...

 Finally I got a shot of a bee on one, a sweat bee, but can you see what else is there?

 Tiny caterpillar?

 And a thrips?

 Another tiny caterpillar

 Fly

 Long-legged fly

 Skipper

 Hover fly

 More caterpillars...

 And flies

 And this may look like a pile of plant debris, but it is yet another caterpillar!

 This looper covers itself with plant debris as camouflaged. I think it is called camouflage looper.

 On the greenery, another predator–I think this is a thick-headed fly.

 Hopper nymph

 Bee

 Plant bug

 Stilt-legged bug

Other Bugs in the Backyard:

 I think this is a spittle bug

 Katydid nymph

 Bumblebee on red clover

 If I had gotten a better picture of this it would have been Backyard Co-Bug of the Day, because it is something I have never seen before. I am assuming it is some kind of larva...

 Not cooperative. On a plant that I think is amaranth.

 Chrysalis in an interesting cocoon. The first time I ever saw one of these was 2012, when I first started taking pictures of bugs. This is the second one I have seen.

 I think these are lacewing eggs.

 Another egg. There was every stage of insect life to be seen in the backyard today: eggs, larvae, imagos (adults), chrysalids... and even dead insects, in the form of gypsy moth caterpillars that died of the fungus (although I didn't photograph those). There were pollinators, and predators... all kinds of tiny life.

 Beetle

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Harvestman

Whenever there's anything to eat, there will be something to eat it, and all of the insects on the black-eyed Susans are something to eat, and so there are things to eat them, including quite a lot of spiders. I was only able to get pictures of a couple of them, but I must have seen at least ten, and who knows how many more were there?