Unfinished Circle

Finally, FINALLY, I saw a monarch butterfly in my backyard today. It flew right up to me, as if to make sure I saw it, and then zoomed past. It was a female, I saw her well enough to discern that, but I did not get a good picture of her. I saw her in front of the house, actually, where unfortunately for some reason this year very little milkweed has grown (in contrast to the huge patch that has taken over a big portion of what little bit of the backyard that is lawn).

The lack of good pictures means she is not going to be Backyard Bug of the Day, but here she is:

 She found the tiniest milkweed plant in the entire yard.

 There are no blooms on it, so I assumed she was laying eggs.

 After she flew away, I looked, and lo and behold, a monarch butterfly egg on the underside of one of the leaves! And yet, I don't think she laid that egg. That egg has the look of one that is going to be hatching soon–you can see the darkness inside that is the black head of the tiny caterpillar to come.

What you may not have noticed is that there were two butterflies in each of the pictures above.

 There are two in this one, too...

 Monarch on the milkweed plant, and question mark butterfly on the rock.

In this shot you can see the white markings on the underside of the wing that distinguish the question mark butterfly from the comma butterfly. They look like... well, a question mark.

Meanwhile, in the backyard...

 I couldn't find the monarch caterpillar from the last few days, but I did find two smaller ones on the same plant, different leaves.

Too bad I didn't find a chrysalis, I could have had the entire life cycle of the monarch butterfly in my backyard.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Tree cricket nymph

I had to make a choice today: do my bug walk in the middle of the afternoon, when there are usually more bugs, but it would be really hot, which means there would not be so many bugs, or do my bug walk in the evening, when there are usually not as many bugs, but at least it would be cooler for me. I went sort of middle ground, it was late in the afternoon, it was still really hot, and there weren't many bugs. Because the bugs don't like the hot weather, either.

 The lacewing eggs have gotten darker. My guess is that they will hatch tomorrow.

 I found an insect leg without an insect. It was fairly large, and I am guessing it used to belong to a leaf-footed bug.

There are a lot of these moths around lately. They flutter up from the ground when I walk around, and then usually land somewhere else, often right in front of my feet:

 Weevil

There was a silk thread stretched across one of the lawn chairs, with two tiny caterpillars walking along it:

All of these pictures are the same caterpillar.

 On the arm of the chair were a couple of slightly larger, but still tiny, caterpillars, that I think are white hickory tussock moth caterpillars. It is possible the smaller ones are, too.

There were not many insects to be seen on the black-eyed Susans today, but there was this beetle:

 Hopper nymphs

 Buffalo tree hopper

The only creatures I could see in abundance on the black-eyes Susans were the crab spiders. Arachnid Appreciation:
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This flower was crowded:

Spider on the flower head...

... spider on a petal...

... and something else really tiny on another petal. I did not see that when I took the pictures, or I might have tried to get a closer shot at it. I was just trying not to scare the spiders away.