New Bugs

 I got my macro lens in September of 2011 (a gift from my husband), but I didn't start using it to look for bugs until the spring of 2012. Knowing next to nothing about bugs at the time, I assumed, having received the lens on the last day of September, that "bug season" was over, and there wouldn't be anything to photograph with it. So I didn't even try. I mean, I probably saw plenty of bugs after I got it, although I wasn't spending near as much time outside at that phase of my life. I just thought that with colder weather coming, there wouldn't be bugs around, and I didn't really start trying to take pictures of them until the following spring. And, to be clear, even though I wasn't all that into bugs yet at that point, the main reason that my husband gave me a macro lens was so that I could take pictures of bugs. You see, I had tried using my regular lens to take pictures of bugs many times, and it was just not that satisfying or successful. So the bug photography started in earnest in 2012. At that point my knowledge of bugs exploded, but most of the explosion at the start was just the massive revelation of how many kinds of bugs there were in my backyard. There were a lot, and I mean A LOT of things I had never seen before, in over 10 years of hanging out in their habitat. That first year it was easy to choose a Backyard Bug of the Day every day that I had not photographed before. That meant I found hundreds of distinct species of bugs. (Or rather, insects. I am not sure if that summer was when I learned that not all insects are bugs, if you use the classification of Hemipterans as "true bugs"). The following year I wasn't exactly finding new species every day, but I found them quite often. Over the ensuing years the number of new bugs I have found has dwindled. I am sure there are still a huge number of bugs in my backyard I have never seen before, but still, though I have never counted them up, the total of species I have found would probably blow my 2012 mind. The thing that is currently blowing my 2024 mind is that 12 years later I am still finding new species.

And today I found two.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Rose hooktip moth caterpillar. My caterpillar book (Caterpillars of Eastern North America by David L Wagner) only shows four species from this family–one of the thinnest sections in the book. It says there are only eight eastern species. Fortunately this is one of the ones in the book.

That bump on its head was very helpful in identifying it. Note the silk thread it is using to hold onto the leaf.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Two marked treehopper. Obviously another thorn mimic. I'm not 100% sure that I have not seen this species before, but at least 95%. [Edit: I was wrong. I have seen one of these before].

This one is not a new species, but it was so cooperative that I have to make it Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:

Great spangled fritillary! Feeding on milkweed.

Great spangled fritillaries are probably the most cooperative species of butterfly. It was incredibly windy today, and I still managed a bunch of good shots of this butterfly, that's how cooperative it was. Note the curled proboscis. And the photo-bombing long-legged fly.

It let me take pictures of both sides of its wings!

None of the pictures show it, but today I realized that those spots are not white, they are silver.

Proboscis in action.

And yet, not the only cooperative butterfly I saw today. We went to the grocery store, and as we were backing out of the driveway I saw a butterfly on sitting on a plant. I sarcastically said that maybe it would still be there when we got home. And it was. But at that time I was on a phone call with my niece, and didn't want to interrupt our conversation to take a picture of the butterfly. But when we were done talking some time later I went outside with my camera, and the butterfly was still there. I fully expected it to fly away as soon as I tried to take its picture, but it stayed completely still:

Small wood satyr butterfly

Other Bugs:

 Unfortunately, I am finding more spotted lanternfly nymphs:

This is just an exuvia, the skin shed when it moults to the next instar. So now I need to be looking for red, black and white bugs.

Still first instar.

Stinkbug nymph.

Crane flies 

Six-spotted tiger beetle:

Buffalo tree hopper

I don't think I have ever seen as many dragonflies as I have this year. It's great after seeing almost none last year.

 

 

 

I think still only one of the birds on the back porch has hatched, and I think at this point the others are not going to, but the parents are still sitting on the nest a lot. The one baby has grown quite a bit in the last few days:

Its eye is open a bit.

Frog:

Frogs are scarce lately, and the ones I have been finding are smaller. There's not much water left in the stream; at this point the rain just keeps it from completely drying out, instead of filling it up.

Hmm... I didn't see any spiders today...