Night And Day

I sat on the back porch steps this afternoon looking at the constant insect activity in the milkweed patch, and thinking about the fact that from morning until night it is busy with bugs. I foolishly didn't realize, though I should have, that it's not just during the day that the milkweed patch is teeming with insects. Many insects, particularly moths, are nocturnal, and many moths are also pollinators. I knew that, but for some reason it never occurred to me that the milkweed patch would be fully of nighttime pollinators. I spend time outside at night, standing on the back porch only a few feet away from the milkweed patch, but because I am out there to look at the night sky and the fireflies, I stand there in the dark, and can't see what's going on only a few feet away from me. Tonight though, I happened to go out into the backyard with the porch light on an noticed a moth feeding on a milkweed plant:

Obviously, I went inside to get my camera, and took a few pictures of it, and then I noticed something...

There were moths all around me.

Notice also the beetle at the bottom of the picture.

There were other insects among the milkweed, too, including a few hopper nymphs.

And I found one bee. I don't know if bees sleep, but this one was not active, just holding on where it decided to spend the night. I looked around and didn't see any more bees hanging out for the night, so I don't know why this one was.

I ended up doing a little bit of a nighttime bug walk (more on that later), and found today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

This is not in my bug book. I tried looking it up on the internet, but the only one I found that looked like this, bird-cherry ermine, was on moth site from England, and I don't know if we would have the same species.

Now, back to the milkweed patch, but the daytime version. This is the first insect I photographed today:

Well, technically the first two, since that bumblebee photobombed this shot.

Something is developing inside the monarch egg, but it's hard to tell if it's a monarch caterpillar, or if something has already parasitized it.

I did see a butterfly that could have been a monarch today; it zipped past me as I was standing among the milkweed, but didn't stop to feed or anything else, so I didn't get a clear look at it.

Bee and plume moths

I've already forgotten the name of this skipper from last week...

I couldn't find this one in my book, either. It's similar to a Virigina ctenucha, but much smaller.

One thing I should note about the milkweed is that the last two years, while I had a fair number of milkweed plants, they didn't flower much. Many of the plants last year didn't have flowers on them at all; they never even had buds. This year they are flowering abundantly, and the bees are responding:

Also here, lady beetle and another kind of beetle.

The bees are mostly very active, there's very little resting and basking.

I came across a vine on my bug walk that had, in the space of about 8 inches, a variety of insects:

There were several assassin bug nymphs.

Also much prey (which they ignored), like this plant hopper nymph.

And this one. I think this is a candy striped leaf hopper nymph.

And a leaf hopper.

About an inch away was this katydid nymph.

I happened to notice that same vine during my late-night bug walk, too:

Some kind of Hemiptera and another species of hopper nymph

Cockroach

Plant bug

Another katydid nymph, much larger, so later instar

I think these two hopper nymphs were there, in those same spots, in the afternoon.

Several weeks ago, this tree was host to a lot of leaf-footed bugs, some of which were engaged in propagating the species. Today, I found this on the tree:

A leaf-footed bug nymph.

Grasshopper nymph

Possibly adult and larva of the same lady beetle species?

I found this caterpillar in the afternoon:

It appears to be a swallowtail, but the color looks different than I have seen for eastern tiger swallowtail. Swallowtails tend to look very different in early instars than they will later, and my book mostly just shows the later, so I don't know if this is an e.t.s. in a coloring I have not seen before, or if it's a different swallowtail species. Another possibility is that this is just after it molted, and it's color hasn't developed yet. That appears to be its exuvia beside it, and...

... I saw it on my late-night bug walk also; the exuvia was gone (some caterpillars eat the skin they have just shed), and the color looks a little different. Still not what I expect for an eastern tiger swallowtail. I'll try to keep an eye on it, but who knows how long it will stick around in that spot?

For a couple of weeks I was seeing several of these weevils every day, and then suddenly they were gone. Today I saw two.

Cockroach seen on my late-night bug walk

Arachnid Appreciation:
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With all of that potential prey on the milkweed, of course there are predators. I saw several spiders last night (most in places I couldn't photograph them), including this one that had caught a moth. Some kind of crab spider.

If you're an insect, the safest time to be near a spider is when it's already feeding on something else.

On the milkweed earlier in the day I found these two spiders:

On a goldenrod leaf