A Patch for Insects

If you've looked at this blog and thought that you might want to attract a lot of insects to your backyard, or maybe you just want to help the insects, but you have a whole lot of green lawn, and for whatever reason can't or don't want to give it up, my backyard experience today might give you some encouragement to do even a small thing to make your backyard friendly to insect. Now, most of my backyard is totally wild. Very little of it is lawn (even less now that we have moved the vegetable garden and let the milkweed stake a claim on a chunk of it), and most of what is growing there are things that nature planted. So I have a LOT of insects. But if your yard is nothing but manicured lawn, you probably don't see very much. (The best thing you can do is not ever use pesticides on your lawn). So, you'll need to choose a spot to make your insect haven. The insect haven will need flowers, and it would be good if it's a bit unruly–you don't want perfect, little plants surrounded by mulch. Mulch is a bit of a dead zone. You want to let the plants be crowded, and unruly, and have let wildflowers (which you might think of as weed) fill in where they find a space. It doesn't have to be a big spot. Today I spent close to half an hour just watching (and photographing) the insects in a particular garden bed in my backyard. It is one of the few areas in my backyard where I have actively tried to cultivate things, and mostly it's been a total fail–very little of what I have planted there has even come up, much less thrived, and try as I might to make this the one spot in my backyard that doesn't have goldenrod and other wildflowers, they are there. Right now there are four things blooming in this garden: autumn joy sedum, which I did plant (my neighbor gave me some plants when she was thinning out her garden); goldenrod (not as much as I usually get there, but the goldenrod is generally not having a great year in my backyard); wood sorrel, and lady's thumb. It's not a huge space; it's basically a trapezoid that is about 15 feet long on the bottom, and maybe 5 feet in "height," if you were looking at it as a drawn shape. That was a terrible description, but the point is, there were a LOT of insects in this small space. Let's have a look at what I was able to photograph (sorry, a lot of these pictures are terrible, but I am going to post them so you can see what was there, even though they are not good quality):

 Like so. Three different species of insects on the same flower cluster/plant. Left to right, honeybee, bumblebee, and Virginia ctenucha moth.

 I think this is the same Virginia ctenucha moth that was on the plant yesterday. It was there the whole time I stood observing this garden, and for most of my bug walk (which I know because I walked by there several times), which lasted around 2 hours. At the end, it was gone (but I think I know where it went–more on that later).

 Lots of honeybees

 Assassin bug nymph. I am surprised that there weren't more predators to be found, with so much potential prey.

 The bumblebees enjoy the autumn joy sedum and the goldenrod

 Wasp

 Did I mention that bumblebees love autumn joy sedum? ('Cause it's a heart? See?)

There were many orders of insects represented in the garden patch: above you have seen Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Hemiptera... now for Diptera:

 

  Crane fly on the grass right next to the garden patch

 Sweat bee on wood sorrel

 Weevil–add Coleoptera to the list of insect orders represented.

 Wasp

 Hover fly

 I can't tell if this tiny thing is a tiny wasp or a tiny fly

 Long-legged fly

 Wasp

 Sweat bee

 Wasp

 Another crane fly, among the greenery in the garden

 Ant. There are ants here and there on the flowers.

 Several katydids were hopping about.

All of that life in just a small patch of my backyard. And there were others that I saw, but did not get a chance to photograph (or even identify). And who knows what's in there that I just didn't see? Many things could be hiding among the greenery. Also, this is the area where I found the stick bug the other day, and in recent weeks this has been the place where I have seen butterflies and moths quite a bit. Just a tangled bit of garden, and so many insects that benefit from it.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Ailanthus webworm moth. I have been wondering when these would finally make an appearance. The two places I most commonly see these are my front porch at night, attracted to the light, and on goldenrod. Here it is on a goldenrod leaf.

Backyard Co-Amphibian of the Day #1:

Backyard Co-Amphibian of the Day #2:

It's rare for me to see two frogs in a day; it's even rarer to see three, and yet, here's the third frog I saw today.

Other Bugs:

There is temporarily a red, metal pedestal in my backyard that is curiously popular with banded tussock moth caterpillars. I don't know why, but lately I very frequently find them resting under the top edge. Today I found this one crawling along the top...

... and as I watched it, it fell off the edge and landed on this leaf, where there was a fall webworm...

... and then about an hour or so later I went by, and there it was on the top again!

I planted this in the rock garden last fall (I can't remember what it's called), and it's been blooming for about a week now, and today was the first time that I saw any insects pollinating the flowers. About time!

Small flowers, small bees.

Tiny wasp

The grasshoppers (and crickets) were back in great numbers, and very flitty, in the rock garden today. These two were interesting to observe:

First, they both jumped onto the rock...

... Then one jumped onto the other. It quickly fell off, and then crawled back onto the rock...

... where the two of them eyed each other for a while, waggling their legs. I think the larger one–the one that jumped on top of the other–is a female. Ultimately nothing came of this, and they both hopped/flew away.

Cricket

Still there. I have decided that though I will continue to check on this, I won't post about it after today unless something dramatic happens. Or something undramatic happens. Whichever.

Yesterday's Backyard Bug of the Day

Leaf hopper on galls

Sharpshooter

Today I could see two contracted datanas. They had moved a little higher in the tree.

Thread-waisted wasp

Lady beetle. I haven't seen very many of these this year.

Leaf hopper. It looks like it has been the survivor of an attack.

Pop quiz: How do we find tree crickets?

Notice the antennae peeking out from leaves? Correct!

Some kind of geometer moth, I think.

Virginia ctenucha moth on goldenrod. It could be the same one from the autumn joy sedum. Or not. Impossible to tell.

There are a couple of purple cone flowers that have been very popular with these leaf hopper nymphs lately.

Jagged ambush bug. I haven't seen many ambush bugs this year, either.

It is sitting on top of a purple cone flower, waiting for an insect to come close enough to grab. When I put my hand on the stem of the plant to turn it so I could take this shot, a whole bunch of those leaf hopper nymphs hopped out. There were lots of bugs on this plant, but none within reach of the ambush bug.

Weevil?

Caterpillar

The ant was joined by other ants in tending its flock of aphids today.

Katydid. I spotted this out the window after I finished my bug walk, and went back out to get pictures of it. Here it is on a piece of old siding that has been removed from the house, and is sitting outside still. I tried to coax the katydid off of it onto the rock it is leaning on, and it flew away. It is still a strange and novel thing to see a katydid fly.

Here's where it landed.

Tiny moth. For scale, that is deer netting.

I am concerned about the monarch chrysalis:

It has these two dark lines. I have never seen that on a chrysalis before. Also, in the evening I saw a wasp flying around inside the enclosure. Now, the enclosure has been open since the caterpillar went into its J, because it's not going to wander off at that point, and I have seen a few of those wasps in the house in the last few weeks. So I am hopeful that it just happened to fly in there, and that nothing has happened to the chrysalis. Time will tell...

Something else time will tell:

You can't tell the sex of a monarch caterpillar by looking at it, but apparently you can tell from the chrysalis.

That tiny crease there indicates this will be a female butterfly... if it emerges.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Nursery web spider

There are some wasps that parasitize spiders; they sting them to paralyze them, and then stuff them into a burrow with its larva, still alive, for the larva to be able to feed on fresh "meat." Here is a wasp subduing a spider.

This harvestman (which is missing several legs) was also in the garden with all of the bugs above. Notice it has a mite attached to it.