Tone Deaf

There is a katydid singing outside the window. Katydids do not have a lovely song. It's horrible to get a cricket into the house because of their chirping, but it is a million times worse to get a katydid in your house. However, it is a summery sound, so I kind of like it, just not up close.

And as I wrote the above, the katydid fell silent.

I don't know what to choose for Backyard Bug of the Day today.

It was hot when I went out for my bug walk, right in the middle of the day with the sun beating down, and I almost didn't expect to see many bugs, but there were actually quite a good contingent of insects out in the horrible heat today (I think it was around 93ºF when I did my bug walk).

All right, let's just decide...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Baby stinkbugs. Or rather, stinkbug nymphs. Remember a few days ago I posted a picture of a stinkbug laying eggs? Well, they have hatched. I took pictures of the eggs yesterday that I was going to post to show that the eggs had changed color, but I didn't think they were ready to hatch because I didn't think they had been there long enough, but I don't remember what day they were laid. Anyway, the pictures from yesterday were not good enough to post, and I figured I would get better ones today. This is a better one, I suppose. Interesting to note that the adult stinkbug who laid these eggs was not red, but brown.

The weather made my camera lens fog up again today:

 

In spite of the heat the black-eyed Susans did have bugs on them, but I didn't see any hoverflies today (on the black-eyed Susans, at least. I did see them in shady, cooler parts of the backyard).

 There were a couple of different kinds of bees.

 And this appears to be a pupal case that something has emerged from.

The newly hatched monarch has visibly developed since yesterday:

 It has made a nice hold in the leaf, and note the milky substance that gives the milkweed its name. I believe it is actually a form of latex. It is toxic, but not to monarch caterpillars.

These have grown so fast in the last two days!

From eating so much milkweed, obviously.

 The dreaded gypsy moth. Female who has laid her egg mass.

Katydid nymph on red clover

I saw several butterflies today, mostly uncooperative...

 Like this red admiral. Yes, it landed, and stayed very still, but it was about 8 feet up on this tree trunk.

 

 This pearl crescent (I think) was somewhat more accommodating.

Remember this one?

 On the same plant was another one, about the same size, but more colorful.

Walking under a tree where I can often find lace bugs, I looked up to try to find some and spotted something else instead:

 Green lacewing. It's quite uncanny how well it blends in with the blotches on the leaves.

And speaking of lacewings...

 

 Apparently I was wrong about when the lacewing eggs would hatch, because they have not come out yet.

Confession: I like insects, but I am totally creeped out by millipedes. It's funny, because I loved them when I was a kid, and we used to catch them and put them in a jar, dozens of them, and loved watching them crawl around in there, and then loved the scurrying when we let them all go. But now anything with more than 8 legs is creepy to me. So this tree covered with millipedes was not my favorite thing in the backyard today:

 As you probably know, these are not insects, but they are arthropods.

 Two millipedes... snuggling?

 Seriously, they were all over this tree.

 Hemiptera nymph

 At first I thought that the head was on the other end, until I realized that was a piece of frass.

 I went to check on some insect eggs I have been observing, and spotted something else on their leaf.

 Tree cricket nymph

With the bright sunlight you can see the insects that are forming inside the eggs:

 Two of the eggs seem to have lost some or all of the patterns that were visible before.

 

 More eggs, different species of insect–not that I know which one, but the eggs are a different shape, and the others were white to start, and had the red markings.

 Some kind of flower beetle that I am too tired to look up.

 Dragonfly

Stinkbug nymph; different species from the ones that just hatched

Arachnid Appreciation:
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I found this curiosity in the package bin, where a few spiders live. It sort of looks like a chrysalis, but it is in a spider web, and it has a moth antennae stuck to it. My guess is that it is a moth that got caught in the web, and the spider wrapped it up in silk. I hope it was a gypsy moth.

Nursery web spider

I think this is a spined micrathena.