Sulphurous

It was a rule-breaking kind of day. I chased a butterfly, and I am posting a picture that is not very good for Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think this is a clouded sulphur butterfly. There are a couple of sulphur butterflies that look very similar, and since I didn't get good pictures it's hard for me to be sure about the identification, but that's the one that seems right to me.

 I rarely see sulphurs in my backyard, and not just because they blend in well, like this one is here.

I didn't find many bugs today, but on the bright side, what I did find, though nothing new, was not the same things I have been seeing every day (although I did see a lot of bees, crickets, and grasshoppers). Other Bugs:

 Daily banded tussock moth caterpillar

Geometer Moth:

Spotted cucumber beetle:

 Tortoise beetle

 Fun fact: if you Google "fly that looks like it has stars on its wings," this is not what comes up. But I feel like it should be. Since that didn't work, I made the effort of reaching for my books, because I was sure this was in one of them, and it is, as I thought, a fruit fly, Eutreta noveboracencis.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Flower crab spider

Flying Away

I think I may have forgotten to mention that I was taking the day off yesterday. I was not home during daylight hours (I left just after dawn), so I was unable to do a bug walk. I did have an interesting encounter of sorts with a bug, though it was nowhere near my backyard. I was riding my bike when a bee passed me. Curious about how fast a bee can fly, I checked the speed on my bike's odometer. I was riding at 9.7 miles per hour. I can't tell exactly how fast the bee was, but obviously it was faster than that. I was impressed. I don't think I have ever given a thought to the actual speed of insects, even when I see them zoom by me in my backyard. Now I know that a bumblebee can go nearly 10 miles per hour (and who even knows if that was its top speed?). I wonder how fast dragonflies go...

I did not release my butterfly before I left yesterday morning, because it was cold out; ditto for when I got home, which was after dark, so I released her this morning:

 Her first flight was not impressive: she landed here in the grass. But her second was much better, and she took off into the sky, too fast for me to take any pictures of her in flight before she disappeared.

I had three bugs for Backyard Bug of the Day, found during my bug walk, but then I saw something during my "Sky Time" this evening, and I decided to use that one insect instead (I didn't want to do four again). Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Firefly larva. I saw this glowing on the ground while I was outside enjoying the sounds of the night (it was cloudy, so there wasn't much to look at in the sky). Of course it would not glow for me when I brought my camera out, but it's still an interesting insect.

 

 Unlike adult fireflies, which only glow on their back ends, I think that the larvae glow over much of the underside of their bodies. Sadly, I cannot show you this, and wasn't even able to confirm it.

The firefly larva was walking across a large, flat rock at the bottom of the back porch steps, and in the couple of minutes that I was out there observing it, a couple of other insects walked by:

 Sorry for the bad picture. Ground beetle

 Cricket

 Other Bugs:

 Aphid

 Thread-waisted wasp

This was one of the bugs I had chosen for Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Small milkweed bug. I read this described once as black with red markings. I thought that was odd because I had always thought of it as red with black markings.

 

 Daily photo of a banded tussock moth caterpillar

This was a Backyard Bug of the Day candidate:

 Weevil

 Leaf hopper nymphs

 Flower fly

 Sweat bee. This was another BBotD candidate.

 Sawfly larvae

 Something pupating

 Honey bee

 Assassin bug nymph

Virginia ctenucha moth

Another frog I almost stepped on.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Orb weaver

I think this is an orchard spider.

Emergence

At last!

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Monarch butterfly, female.

But let's back up a bit:

 This is how the chrysalis looked at around ten o'clock this morning.

 And this is how it looked around 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

 Then this is how it looked around 8:30 or 9 o'clock in the evening. Note that the expansion joints have popped.

 In case you don't know what I mean by that. Usually that's a sign that the butterfly is coming out soon, but at this point I was sure that the butterfly was infected, and was unable to come out.

 Then at about 9:30 p.m. I walked past the enclosure, and there she was, having just eclosed within about a minute, I think. Notice how big and puffy her body is. It is full of fluid, which will be pumped into the wings to straighten them out.

 The proboscis is in two separate pieces, and one of the first things they do when they come out is line them up and stick them together. I really don't know how that works. Also, you can see a droplet of green liquid on the inside of the chrysalis. I am not sure what that is, but I would guess it's whatever makes the whole thing look green during the pupation process.

The butterfly looks really small to me, and her legs don't look quite right, so I don't know how well she is. I can't release her at night with the temperature so low, so we'll see how things look in the morning.

Other Bugs:

 Flower fly

 This is a pretty cool looking fly, but I can't really show you that, because most of the pictures look kind of like this.

 Candy striped leaf hopper

 I saw another velvet ant, and took a lot of pictures, but, well, they mostly look pretty much like this.

The goldenrod remains a popular dining spot for pollinators:

 Virginia ctenucha moth and honeybee

 Bumblebee

 

Wasp:

 Honeybee and flower fly

This fly is covered with pollen, and what I can't understand is how is it not irritating to have pollen all over your eye?

 Tree cricket

 Woolly bear caterpillar

 I am guessing this is a lacewing larva, or something similar, covered in fluff as camouflage.

 Leaf hopper

 Assassin bug nymph

 Banded tussock moth caterpillar

 White hickory tussock moth caterpillar

 Hoppers with ant attendants.