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: