Butterfly

 I am constantly frustrated by, and complaining about, uncooperative bugs, so it pleases me to be able to present to you...

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Monarch butterfly. This butterfly spent several hours this afternoon feeding on the autumn joy sedum. It came and went a few times, flying off and returning, but mostly just stayed there. It is somewhat shocking that it is the end of August and a monarch butterfly has not been Backyard Bug of the Day yet this year. Butterflies have been scarce in my backyard this summer.

This is a male, identified by the black spots on its hindwings. 

It shared the flowers with a lot of bumblebees, but not very graciously. When this bee came closer, the butterfly kept opening its wings over it, and I am sure it must have been touching it. Several times bumblebees flew in very close, and the butterfly swatted at them with its wings. It was very different from the gentle opening, sort of occasional flapping that it was doing–it was a sharp snapping open of the wings to bat the bees away. Bumblebees have a tendency to land right on top of other bugs that are feeding on flowers, which I assume is an attempt to bully them out of the way, though it usually just looks like a sort of thoughtless clumsiness. Well, this butterfly wasn't having it, and was not going to cede its space to any bee. It did eventually send this one on its way.

Here you can just barely see the bee under the right wing.

And while we're on the subject of monarch butterflies, here's a monarch caterpillar that I found on my forest walk:

There is a patch of milkweed in a clearing in the woods, as I believe I have mentioned, and a few times I have found monarch caterpillars there. It may, in fact, have been the same monarch caterpillar each time. This could be the one I saw a couple of days ago, that I could not find yesterday. This is on a different plant, and they do sometimes leave one plant to go feed on another. This one is now looking very close to pupation.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Net-winged beetle

Other Bugs:

The fall webworm caterpillars have dispersed from the web.

There are two of these groups of large milkweed bug nymphs in one of the milkweed patches. They're pretty interesting to observe. The move from plant to plant in a group. I have never actually seen them go from one plant to another, but one day they'll be on a plant, and the next day on another three feet away. And it's interesting that there are different stages of development in the group. Here you can see several that look like they are on their last instar before adulthood, and a tiny, early instar one, and a lot in between.

And that's it for today. No spiders, either!

Mesmer-eyes

 I don't really have any overarching commentary on my bug walk today. I walked. I took pictures of bugs. That pretty much sums it up. There were a lot of spiders. I took my camera on my forest walk. 

Backyard Bug of the Day:

This is a flower fly of rhe genus Spilomyia, possibly species longicornis. There are two species in the book that look identical to me, and only one of them lists the species name (longicornis, obviously).  Also obvious–it is a yellow-jacket mimic. But it's a fly, a harmless pollinator.

This is my favorite picture from today. There's the fly, a bumblebee, and in the background, an ambush bug. Neither the been nor the fly went anywhere near the ambush bug.

This fly has amazing eyes.

 Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

Found on my forest walk. We see a lot of frogs and toads in the woods; I hardly ever see them in my regular backyard anymore, which I think may be due to the drought.

 

Today was incredibly windy, so I had a really hard time taking pictures. I saw a lot more bugs than I got pictures of. Other Bugs:

 

Robber fly

 

Planthopper

I found several stinkbug nymphs:

Two of this species, I think; this one is an earlier instar...

... than this one. Based on the pale color of this one I think it may have just molted.

I also found several of this species, also different instars:

Fly

Cricket

Milkweed tussock moth caterpillars

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Nursery web spider. It did not attack the bee. In fact, when the bee got closer in front of the spider, it is the spider that backed off.

Tiny spider on the trunk of a tree

I don't know what it is, but that yellowish thing on the side of its abdomen is a parasite.

I found this spider on my camera, and it was rather reluctant to leave. Male spined micrathena.

 

Just yesterday I commented to my husband that for the last several days we haven't had the problem of walking through spiderwebs on our woods trails, and I wondered if the "season" for the spined micrathenas was over, if there is such a thing. Well, today I walked into, or almost walked into, at least ten.

 

Long jawed orb weaver, I think:

Rainy Saturday

 It rained today:

I went out to do my bug walk in an intermission in the precipitation. This bee was the only one on the autumn joy sedum today.

There were definitely bugs out there, though, who were willing to risk getting caught up in the next round of rain, including today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

I think this is another tachinid fly species, but it could be another type of fly. On goldenrod.

Flies were mainly what I saw today, on this one goldenrod plant, and I got pictures of a few:

Bottle fly, and something else coming in for a landing.
 

There were a lot of katydids around today, in one particular flower bed. I saw at least half a dozen within a small area, both males and females. At night I can hear a few different species, but this is the one I see the most.

 

Assassin bug nymph

I don't know what this is, but it looks like it is from the order Hymenoptera.
 

Large milkweed bug nymphs:

These look like they have developed quite a bit... and there's proof on the right side of the picture, blurred in the background are some exuvias from molts. When I spotted them they were piled up like this...

 ... and they scattered a bit when I moved closer.

Looking back to last night...

As I was writing my blog last night, about how I didn't find any caterpillars outside with the black light, so I came in and tried it out on the caterpillars in the dining room, it occurred to me that I knew where there were quite a few caterpillars out in the dark, so I went out and shined the black light flashlight on the fall webworms, and wow, did it ever work on them! I had to tweak the color in the photo to be more accurate to how it looked, but really they were even brighter than they appear here. Fascinating. Anyway, it was after midnight, so I couldn't put them in yesterday's blog, so here they are.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Nursery web spider on autumn joy sedum. Not a full grown spider; it was rather small.

The Dark of Night

 I had some interesting insect moments after dark tonight. 

A couple of months ago, when the milkweed was in bloom, I happened to see one night that there were a lot of moths on the milkweed flowers. Then last night I read an article about how active moths are in pollinating flowers at night. Then in the early evening, before it got dark, I found a couple of moths on the autumn joy sedum, and remembered that there was a night last year when I found some interesting moths on those flowers after dark. All of this clicked together in my head and I decided to go out after dark to look for moths on the autumn joy sedum. I didn't find any on those flowers, but I did find other bugs in the dark.

First, here's one of the moths I found in the evening, as Backyard Bug of the Day:

I don't know what this is. It's not in my book. It looks a lot like a grape leaf folder moth, but not quite.

When I went out after dark, I found several bumblebees who had apparently decided to spend the night there instead of going... wherever bumblebees go at night. It does sometimes happen when the evenings get cool that bumblebees will just chill out on the flowers where they had been feeding. I don't know if bumblebees–or any insects, really–sleep:

 

There were also a couple of earwigs:

 

Female earwig

 Not finding anything else on the autumn joy sedum I decided to check on the goldenrod:

Male earwig

 

I did find one moth on a goldenrod leaf next to the autumn sedum, but it was not doing any pollinating.
 

When I went back into the house I accidentally let a moth inside. Here it is on my wrist when I captured it and brought it back outside.

 That's not all the fun I had with insects in the dark of night. I read recently that if you want to find caterpillars you should go out at night with a black light, because caterpillars floresce under black light. I happen to have a black light flashlight, so I took that outside and looked around to try to find caterpillars, or any bugs that would glow under the light. I found that the bees resting on the autumn joy sedum glowed, which makes sense, because bees see ultraviolet... actually, I don't know if that has anything to do with it. Anyway, I didn't spot any caterpillars, so I went where I knew there was a caterpillar: my dining room:

 Yes, I know, it's a terrible picture. It was dark, after all. The picture doesn't really show how it looked, because it has come out very blue, but the lighter areas glowed green. Interesting that only parts of the caterpillar glowed under the black light. Now, you may be wondering, what caterpillar do you have in your dining room?

This one:

Remember several days ago when I found some polyphemus moth caterpillars? I adopted them to raise in my dining room. This one, however, I only adopted today; I found it on my bug walk. It's a bit bigger than the others, and its features have changed a little. I obviously missed getting this one the other day when I adopted the rest of them.
 

I didn't get a lot of bug pictures today. I didn't see a lot of bugs, and it was windy again, which made photography difficult, and in some cases impossible. So I don't have a lot for Other Bugs:

It was the kind of bug walk where I take pictures of a couple of bottle flies on a log just because I haven't taken pictures of much else.
 

I really like thistle flowers, but not as much as bees do.

 A pair of meadow katydids:

Male
 

Female. I found them both on the same plant, but not at the same time.
 

About two weeks ago I found a monarch caterpillar of an early instar in a clearing in the woods on my forest walk. I went back a little later with my regular camera to take a picture of it, and by then it was gone. I thought it could have been eaten, but I hoped it was just somewhere else on the plant where I could not find it. I looked all over the plant, and didn't see it, but though I may appear otherwise, I am an optimist, so I hoped it was okay. I looked for it several times in the last two weeks (See? Optimist), and had no luck, but today, there it was! Now I realize that this could be a different caterpillar. It doesn't really matter either way. There is a monarch caterpillar on that plant in the woods, and it makes me happy. Of course, once again I had my cellphone, not my real camera. By the time I got back to the house it was too dark to go back for pictures. Too bad I had not remembered about looking for caterpillars with blacklight at that point...

Arachnid Appreciation:

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I think this is a long-jawed orb weaver. It probably looks like it was taken at night in the dark, but I took this on my bug walk. It just happened to have its web on the barbecue grill, which is black, and that is the background.
 

I found this on my late night search:

Goldenrod crab spider with moth prey on goldenrod. These spiders blend in very well on their eponymous plant.