Stay Off the Furniture

 We had a little bit of a storm last night, some rain and wind, and today the temperature had fallen, along with a lot of leaves. It still was perfectly reasonable weather for bugs, but I didn't find very many of them.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

This may be a four-humped stinkbug. I am not completely convinced, comparing it to pictures in bug guides, but it looks very close.

Other Bugs:

This ailanthus webworm is now ensconced in a new web, while another one remains in the old web (and there is another web altogether on an adjacent plant with another one living there).

Today there were only nymph large milkweed bugs around, no adults.

Moth

Male mosquito feeding on nectar, as they do, on asters

Fly on goldenrod

Candy striped leaf hoppers

I don't know why I am sharing this picture. I don't even know why I took it, but here it is: Two slugs propagating their species on my lawn chair. I was not pleased to see this pair on my chair, but I wasn't about to touch them to remove them. I don't know where they plan to deposit that egg sac, but I hope it's not on my chair. Anyway, as you probably know, slugs are not bugs. Or insects. Or even arthropods. They are related to insects only in that both are invertebrates. Slugs are mollusks and gastropods. Full disclosure–I am completely repulsed by slugs:

Hyperbole

 It was a dark and stormy afternoon. Well, okay, it sprinkled a little. But it was dark, and windy. And I didn't take any good pictures today.

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

Backyard Bird of the Day:

I don't know what this is, other than a bird of prey. As you can tell, I didn't get a good look at it, and this is not a scenario for a macro lens. There had been some crows sitting in the dead tree next to this one, and they all flew off right before this bird swooped in to sit for a minute. I enjoyed watching it when it flew away; it flew so elegantly.

An ailanthus webworm left the web and it looks like it has started a new one.

 

Cricket, female

Hover fly

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Jumping spider

I think this is a long-jawed orb weaver.

Memory Lane

 I was looking for something here on the blog, which led to me going through a lot of old posts, reinforcing how many more bugs I found in my backyard in other years. There was also a reminder of the drought we went through in 2015. But there were more bugs then.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

This may look exactly like some bugs I have posted frequently lately, but those were large milkweed bugs. This is a small milkweed bug. The difference is seen in size, which is hard to compare when you see only one bug, but also in the markings on the back. I realize that this is not really a good picture (and therefore should not be BBotD), but it's what I got. The wind and lack of cooperation from the bug were against me.

This horrible picture at least shows the markings. I read this one described as being black with red markings, which I thought odd because I always saw it as red with black markings, mainly because of the black heart that makes this so identifiable.

Other Bugs:

One of the grasshoppers was still hanging around today.

Today I got a better picture of it. It was on a different plant today, proving again that it can get around find without that missing leg.

 Bad picture of a wasp (ugh, why do I undermine myself like that? But it's true... although more the wasp's fault than mine), but I am posting it for the insect I didn't see when I took the picture.

 

Crane fly

A leaf hopper nymph and a leaf hopper. I don't know if they are the same species.

 In the middle of the main milkweed patch are two thriving, blooming goldenrod plants.

Here is one of them. These two plants should be teeming with insects, but they are not.

On the two plants, I found two honeybees...

... one bumblebee, some gnats (which were flying around and didn't get into the picture)...

... one jagged ambush bug, pictured here, and one stilt bug, which flew away before I could take its picture. There should be at least a dozen bees on these plants, a wasp or two, some flies, perhaps a moth, several beetles, a couple of spiders (which may have been lurking unseen), at least one looper caterpillar, and a hairstreak butterfly. I haven't even SEEN a hairstreak butterfly in about a month, and I haven't seen any on the goldenrod. Same with looper caterpillars. 

Where are you, bugs? I miss you!

On another goldenrod plant nearby, I thought I was about to witness an assassination, but the assassin but turned and moved off in the opposite direction, and the stilt bug was unharmed.

I didn't find this cricket on my bug walk, I found it while I was harvesting cucamelons from the garden; it was hiding among the leaves.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Trash line spider. Note the background color of an autumn leaf.

Resilience

 I don't even know how to sum up my bug walk today...

I don't have a Backyard Bug of the Day again. This brings up a point, though. I started my Backyard Bug of the Day project around May 2012. I had received my macro lens for my birthday in September 2011, and at that time, knowing very little about insects, figured I would have to wait until spring to use it for insect photography. That summer of 2012, I came up with rules for Backyard Bug of the Day, the primary one being that nothing could be chosen twice. And that year I had no repeats–I had about 200 days of bugs with a different bug being Backyard Bug of the Day every day. On probably most of those days they were insects I had never seen before. In 2013, my second year of the project, I decided that bugs that had been chosen as BBotD the previous summer could be BBotD again, as long as they had not been chosen in the current year, but still most days, the vast majority of days, they were bugs that were new to me, meaning for two whole summers, almost every day I was able to find a new insect to feature for Backyard Bug of the Day. In the years since, the number of new-to-me-and-my-backyard-bug-project bugs has dwindled more and more. I do still occasionally find something I have never seen before, and it's always exciting. But up until this year I haven't had a problem finding something different to feature every day. There weren't days during the non-freezing months when I could not find something to post that had not already been posted this year. Every summer I found at least 200 different species of insects in my backyard. But this year is different. The days I can't find a Backyard Bug of the Day are racking up. And to an extent, I know what is missing, what I am not seeing. It's discouraging. Maybe it's the drought, maybe its something else, I don't know–but we have had drought years since I started this project, and I was able to find bugs then. I just hope this is not a permanent change, but based on what I have read about the collapse of insect populations around the world, this is disheartening and kind of alarming. I am not a scientist, but to an extent what I do could be called citizen science, and my observations are not encouraging.

However, in spite of not finding something new today, there are some interesting things that I saw.

 For instance, I found two grasshoppers today:

I think the plant is called amaranth.

You may notice something unusual about this one:

It is missing one of it's rear legs. That's actually not that unusual. There was one a few summers hanging around this garden bed that had lost both of its rear legs. It didn't move around much, but it did move around. I know this one could move fine, because when I looked for it later...

... it had moved. It is impressive to see how well insects and spiders are able to adapt to deal with pretty serious damage to limbs, wings, antennae, and other body parts. I am sure there are difficulties, but they do seem quite able to go on with their lives without a limb or two, or fly with damaged wings.
 

 Photobombed:

Cabbage white butterfly

Ailanthus webworms:

Some kind of Hemiptera, and a stilt bug (which I think is also a Hemiptera)

Rove beetle. For some reason it did not have its wings tucked in under its elytra.

It flew straight into a spider's web, but it appears to be an abandoned web, no spider appeared, and the beetle managed to get itself out of it.

Bristletail

Wasp on goldenrod

 

A couple of weeks ago there was an ant swarm coming from this spot, where today there was another, smaller swarm:

Last time there were two sizes of winged ants; this time there were only the smaller ones, and the non-winged ones, and nowhere near as many. But on the other side of the house...

... bigger ants were taking to the air.

Photobombed by a ground beetle. That hole is the ant hole these ants came from.

Also a cricket hopped by. You know, I don't think this species of cricket has been Backyard Bug of the Day this year, so we're going to have a Backyard Bug of the Day after all. And this is it. Backyard Bug of the Day, cricket.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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The crab spiders remained coy:

The nursery web spiders were more obliging: