A Better Day

 I did a bug walk yesterday, and took my camera with me into the woods, and did not end up with a Backyard Bug of the Day. I saw very few bugs, and didn't get pictures of any that had not been BBotD already recently. I only took 62 pictures, and at least ten of them were terrible pictures of a bird (because, of course, I had the macro lens on the camera, which is pretty useless for taking pictures of a bird 50 feet away, even if it's a bird as big as a pileated woodpecker. Or, an actual pileated woodpecker). I was perplexed when I got back to the house after such an unsuccessful bug walk. I think that it was the biggest failure I have ever had in looking for bugs for a time of year when flowers are blooming, the weather is mild, and there should have been bugs everywhere. But there weren't.

Today was better.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I think this is a red-banded hairstreak butterfly. It was really small, even for a hairstreak. In this shot it is doing something that hairstreaks often do, which is to rub their wings back and forth against each other, which gives a glimpse of the blue color on the dorsal side of the wing. Hairstreaks rarely rest with their wings open, so it's hard to get a look at the dorsal side, much less take a picture. But when they do this wing rubbing thing, you get a little peek. I have no idea why they do it. I've looked it up before, and the basic gist of what I have read is that no one knows why they do it, but lots of people have guesses. None of the guesses really seem plausible to me, so I won't bother mentioning them.

Many hairstreak butterflies have delicate little "tails" on their hindwings, although they often lose those in attacks from predators. But butterflies can still fly with a surprising amount of damage to their wings; the loss of those tiny tails doesn't slow them down.

Other Bugs:

I had hoped to have two little butterflies as BBofD, but the pictures of this one didn't satisfy me. It's still cute, though.

Leaf hopper

Robber fly

Sweat bee on hawksweed

Sweat bee on daisy

Some kind of plant bug nymp on fleabane. There looks like some tiny insect in the lower right of the picture, but I didn't see it when I was taking the picture, so I didn't get a closer shot.

The fleabane flowers were popular today, as they usually are.

Mostly with tumbling flower beetles. I have never seen so many tumbling flower beetles before.

Some kind of beetle larva

Tiny moth I have never seen before, that is not BBotD because it did not cooperate:

Check out that tiny, curly proboscis
 

Today I found out from one of my bug books that ebony jewelwing damselfly males are territorial, which explains why I see this one in the same part of my backyard every day lately:

Sometimes it poses for me...

Sometimes it lets me get close...

 

But today I could not get a good angle that let me get the face, body, and wings all in focus at the same time, especially with the breeze moving that leaf up and down, and having to be leaning into a thorn bush to take these shots, while a thorn jabbed me in the shin. But it's soooooooo beautiful! 

I took these yesterday:

Okay, back to today...

I think this is a winter firefly, which is actually active year-round. And during the day. Go figure.

Robber flies. They can fly around like this. Awkwardly.

Moth on fern. Those brown speckles are the fern spores.

There's hardly any water left in the stream...

But there's mud, and so I can see an animal has been there... probably a raccoon.

There are still some pools, though, and some flowing water, so there are still places for water bugs like these water striders (one is flying on the left).

And here are some caddisfly larval cases. I don't know if there are still larvae in there, or if they have left their little houses and the water behind and become flying adults.

Sometimes I find bugs by spotting evidence of their presence rather than by actually seeing them at first:

Spotting a leaf covered with frass...

... can lead to finding a sawfly larva

Usually I see these frogs in or on the edge of the stream. It was strange to see this one several feet away and heading further.

A sample of what yesterday's bug walk was like:

Frustrating. There are two dragonflies in this picture; can you find them both?

Still, better than these butterfly pictures:

I'm not even going to try to identify it. Them–there were two.

And as for this moth...

I can't even say this pileated woodpecker was the least cooperative thing in the woods yesterday, because at least I got some pictures...

 

But I got much more cooperation from yesterday's toad:

The most cooperative thing in the woods yesterday.

Arachnid Appreciation:

In the last few days I have seen a lot of these spider egg cases, mostly dangling underneath milkweed leaves. These things are only a couple of millimeters across, the spiderlings must be almost invisibly tiny, at least if there are as many in there as other spider species have. Although, I have no idea what spider species these eggs belong to.

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I found this spider dangling from my hair...

From yesterday:

I think that is a female on the left, and a male on the right. In some species of spiders the males don't build webs, they just hang out in a female's web, hoping for some of her leftovers and a chance to mate, all while trying not to get eaten himself. I don't know if that is true for the species, which I think are orchard spiders.