If You're Going To Be Clumsy, You Have To Be Resilient

 I had a bad day today.

I wrecked my camera, and it was totally my fault, completely due to my own stupidity and carelessness. I am upset with myself. It's not fixable. And they don't even make this camera anymore. I did this while I was walking in the woods today, and I hadn't taken many pictures yet. In the moment, I figured that was it for my photography for the day, and for the foreseeable future.

But. I don't admit defeat easily. Sure, my first reaction to whatever goes wrong is despair, but then I find a way to work around the problem. So I experimented with the camera, and found out that it sort of still works. It doesn't work well, but it does still take pictures. My one true gift in life is working around technology when it won't do what I want, so I found a way to continue my bug walk (well, I had to continue the walk anyway, because I was about half a mile away from my house), and all three of today's Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day were photographed after I irreparably destroyed my camera. 

My first Backyard Co-Bug of the Day is courtesy of an act of compassion on my part.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1: 

What's this, you ask? A caterpillar thrashing around in the stream. Once I figured out what it was, knowing that caterpillars can't swim, and that if it sank it would drown, I got a stick to lift it out. As it turns out, it was still attached to a silk thread from a branch above, so I ended up catching the thread on the stick and lifting it to dry land.

It was not demonstrative in its gratitude for the rescue.

There was a very relatable moment, however, when it was inching along and its back end landed on this bit of twig, which then rolled down the rock, and since the caterpillar had grabbed on with its back end it went rolling down with it. Many times have I stepped on a stick and nearly rolled my ankle in the woods. It's never been as dramatic for me as it was for the caterpillar, simply because of scale.

It got up and walked off, probably hoping no one saw that.

I am pretty sure this is a new species for me.

It appears to be some kind of geometer moth caterpillar, given the inchworm movement. But you know I am too lazy to look this up. Most geometer moths are pretty boring looking.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Dragonfly

Dragonflies were more than usually cooperative today:

And damselflies had their moments:

 

There were several of these flitting about above the small pond, and mostly landing on these grass stems in the center, so I could not get close to them.

One finally came a little closer.

Later I saw an ebony jewelwing:

It was not cooperative.

I think this is the third time I have ever seen an ebony jewelwing on my property. They are magnificent, and this one would definitely be BBotD if I had been able to get a better shot of it.

Anyway...

The last Backyard Co-Bug of the Day for today was not one I saw on my walk, but one I saw when I went out later to do more trail work. I had just stepped into the woods when I saw it, and ran back to the house (about twenty feet, which is a good thing, because I hate running) to get my camera. It hadn't stayed still, but I was able to find it again.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:

Eyed click beetle

I'll bet you can guess where it got that name from.

It's a pretty large species of click beetle. This is the third time I have seen one in my backyard, and the first time that it didn't fly in out of nowhere and land on someone's shirt.

 

Other Bugs:

Not quite as cooperative as the one I saw yesterday, but...

I think this is a little wood satyr butterfly. Yesterday it posed for me with its wings up, and today with them flat. It was flying laps around part of the backyard, and on some of the laps it paused here for me to take pictures. It just didn't land close enough for a nice close-up!

I can't tell if this is a beetle or some kind of Hemiptera:

 

These moths are all over the place, and they rise up like reverse confetti when I walk by:

Usually they then land in the leaf litter, where, as you can imagine, they blend in really well. This one landed on a rock.

 

 Tiny flowers attract tiny bugs. I think this is some kind of borer beetle.

There are a bunch of moth species that are similar in looks and behavior, and the behavior is to never let me get close enough for a good picture. This is one of them.

A fly that has succumbed to a fungus, which reminds me of the book I am currently reading, Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey. I am rereading it in preparation for reading the sequel, Red Side Story. Anyway, in the book people die of a disease called The Mildew, and I read the book before I ever knew that this happens to insects and spiders, so now whenever I see one that has died from fungus, I think of The Mildew. I wonder if Jasper Fforde knows about this aspect of the wild world...

 

Firefly

Robber fly mating pair. I think the large one on the right is the female.

There was some weirdness in the small pond today, something that was not there yesterday:

The water was covered with these... things. They are tiny, and at first I thought they were eggs of some kind–in fact, I was worried that they might be mosquito eggs (they're not–I looked it up when I got home), but they were moving, kind of twitching, and when I looked at them on my computer I could see that they are insects, or at least insect larvae. But I have no idea what they are. They are not mosquito larvae, although there are still plenty of those in the small pond.

You can see they have tiny antennae.

There were masses of them.

I don't know why mama robin is on the nest instead of off finding food for the baby bird, but she was sitting there every time I peeked today.

I don't know how the next few days are going to play out, photography wise. I guess we'll see what I can do.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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This spider really didn't want its picture taken:

Every time I turned the vine around, it scurried back to the other side.

I did finally get one shot. It is missing one of its front legs.

This was an interesting scenario. Those are two different species of spiders, I think. Can you see the tiny one in the big, messy web? I don't know what the other one was up to...