Web Users?

 If insects could use the internet, like the world wide spider web maybe, I would swear that they read my blog from yesterday and were determined to prove that I am wrong. I saw several cabbage white butterflies today, which flitted around me as if to remind me that I don't only see orange and black butterflies. They didn't pose for me, though, no doubt because they were offended at being so callously forgotten yesterday (which isn't really true. I didn't forget them. I just didn't mention them. And, by the way, I did not see a red-spotted purple, so...). And then, because I said that there were no red-legged grasshoppers around lately...

 Today I found three of them within one small garden bed:

 Then to further prove me wrong, one of the grasshoppers I keep seeing in front of the house (in the road, actually) let me get close enough to take this picture:

I know, it's terrible, but I have been seeing these for over a month in the road in front of my house, and whenever I get within about ten feet of them they fly away. Generally what happens is they fly a little bit farther down the road, so just because I am walking that way it's like I am chasing them... which I sort of am, because I want to take a picture. Then when I get to the end of the road, they fly off somewhere else. There was about a two week period in which this happened every day. I kept hoping to get a shot for Backyard Bug of the Day, and it never happened.

And speaking of...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Caterpillar tucked into a groove in tree bark. I tried looking it up and failed to identify it.

Today when I went out to get the mail, I checked for insects on the autumn joy sedum as I walked by. Strangely, there was not a single insect on any of the flowers. Then when I started my bug walk, again I checked for bugs on the autumn joy sedum, and there were none there. Not a one. These flowers were covered with bumblebees yesterday, and I took pictures of moths on them last night. And today, they were abandoned. Finally at the end of my bug walk I found one, solitary fly:

Maybe all of the bugs were on the Japanese knotweed. Certainly a lot of them were. It was a veritable swarm of bees, wasps, and flies. It was warm today, and that seems to make insects energetic sometimes, so photography was mainly a failure, but I caught a couple in flight:

 

Sharpshooter

 

 Leaf hopper

Arachnid Appreciation:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

You can't really tell from this picture, but this flower crab spider really did look quite convincingly like it was just part of this thistle. The whole plant is spike, and the spider looked like part of the sepal.