Monday, May 25, 2020

Lots of Lepidoptera Larvae at Last

Today was finally the breakthrough day, and I found a huge variety of insects in my backyard. I didn't even get pictures of all of them, so when you see how many pictures I do have, imagine that that is a fraction of what I saw. Notably absent lately have been caterpillars; other than early spring sightings of woolly bears I think I have only seen one or two before today, but today there was practically a caterpillar explosion.
A caterpillar is Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

And the others:


I spotted this one dangling from a leaf, crawling up its silk string...

 ... and eventually it arrived at the leaf.

I saw a few caterpillars dangling, but I think they were all different species.

 This one was dangling from a cedar tree, and I assumed when I saw it that it was just a needle from the tree, because I am often faked out by cedar needles dangling on bits of spider webs, thinking they are caterpillars, and then when I look closely I see what they really are. It has happened enough times that I almost didn't bother to look closely at this one–after all, it has a pattern on its back that really makes it look like a cedar needle. However, it is, indeed, a caterpillar.

 I really hope these are not gypsy moth caterpillars. It's kind of hard to tell in early instars.

 I didn't find this one until I went inside after my bug walk. I was reading the newspaper at the dining room table when I felt it crawling on my arm. Here it is on the comics page. It was really tiny; too bad I wasn't reading a page with text when I found it, because then you could judge its size by comparison with the letters.

 This is not a caterpillar, though it looks a lot like one. Sawfly larva.

There have been a lot of weevils in the backyard lately, of a variety of species, and today I found one that I think might be new to me, so it is Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:
 Really small.





Most of the other weevils I saw today were rather uncooperative, but here is a pair:

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

Other Bugs:
 The number of bees I am seeing has really dropped in the last few days, except for the sweat bees that continue to swarm one particular area of the yard. Here is a sweat bee on a multiflora rose bloom.

 I think this is a twelve-spotted lady beetle.

 Photobombed while taking a picture of a dandelion.

 I saw two of these, one each on opposite sides of the house.

Stilt bugs were also out in numbers today:
 On a blueberry flower

 There are actually three in this picture; the blur in the upper right hand area is another one on the flower buds.

 Plant hopper of some kind. There was a sudden abundance of these, mostly on goldenrod plants, one per plant.

 Fly

 Sawfly

 Fly?

 Crane fly

So many kinds of flies today...

 Mosquito? I think it's a mosquito, a male, so not a biter.

 Leaf hopper nymph

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Jumping spider. This has quite a large abdomen, which makes me think it might be a gravid female.







I think this jumping spider has caught one of those really annoying little leaf hoppers that are so impossible to photograph, and when I saw that that was what it had, I felt respect for its ability to catch one, because I have so much trouble getting close enough to take pictures of them.









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