Going For the Gold

 Maybe it's the Olympic Spirit in the air, but all of the bugs today were after gold. Goldenrod, that is. 

Today was the first sunny day in... I forget how many days. My walks lately have been very soggy, and I haven't seen many bugs (and I didn't bring my camera, because it was always either raining or expected to rain). Yesterday I couldn't go out at all because of the high winds. But today, at times anyway, the sun shone, and the bugs in my backyard were out to enjoy a goldenrod feast. There were a LOT of bees, many species...
 

But insects of other orders, too, like this amazing fly.

While we're on the subject of goldenrod, I just want to dispel a popular myth, one that I used to believe: Goldenrod and ragweed are not the same thing.  The presence of all of these bugs on these flowers demonstrates a key difference between ragweed and goldenrod: ragweed is wind pollinated, and goldenrod is pollinated by insects and birds. Ragweed flowers are small, insignificant, green flowers that you probably don't even notice, unless you know what they look like. They often grow along roadsides, and in the same areas as goldenrod, and bloom around the same time. But since they are so drab an unnoticeable, people don't notice they are there, while they DO notice the bright goldenrod. So when they get hay fever, they blame the goldenrod, and think THAT is ragweed, the terrible plant they are allergic to, that makes them miserable every summer. Now, I'm not saying people can't be allergic to goldenrod, but to have it trigger an allergy attack you'd pretty much have to stick it up your nose–goldenrod has sticky, heavy (for pollen) pollen, and that is why it needs insects and birds to pollinate it by picking it up and carrying it to other flowers. Ragweed, however, has light, dusty pollen that is carried by the wind, miles, and miles, and miles. You could have an allergic reaction to goldenrod even if there wasn't a plant for hundreds of miles, because the wind could carry it to you on the air, and you could just breathe it in. Goldenrod is, as you can see, an important food for pollinators, especially in the late summer, and into the fall, when there's not much else blooming. So don't pull out goldenrod thinking you are getting rid of the source of your itchy eyes and runny nose. Leave it for the bees, and the many, many other things that feed on its nectar.

 Can you spot the moth?

 I saw a lot of ailanthus webworm moths. Ailanthus is their food source as caterpillars, but as adults they really love goldenrod. That is nearly always where I see them (aside from on my front porch).

But ailanthus webworm moths were not the only Lepidoptera I saw on the goldenrod. I think this is a red-banded hairstreak butterfly.

Here we have two kinds of bees, a fly, at least two kinds of beetles, and some ants.

Wasps love goldenrod:

Plant bug

Of course, as usual, there are predators lurking among all of those tiny, golden blossoms... which this bee did not notice...

Female jagged ambush bug, and two males who would like to get to know her better. I feel bad that she dropped the bee when I moved the plant to see her better.

And here's a baby ambush bug, too, already hunting on the goldenrod. Although I guess it's more apt to say lurking–they are ambush predators, after all.

Also found on goldenrod, today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

Elephant mosquito, my favorite species of mosquito. I know, it sounds crazy, I have a favorite species of mosquito! But these are not like other mosquitoes. They don't feed on blood, so they don't bite. They feed on flowers, so they are pollinators. Their larvae eat the larvae of other mosquito species. They are beneficial insects! They are big for mosquitoes, and quite beautiful. 

It was still quite breezy today, which made it hard to take pictures of bugs on goldenrod, so a lot of my pictures didn't come out, but I want to show you a couple of my bad shots just because they at least show the beautiful colors of this mosquito.

On the same plant as the elephant mosquito (and visible in the first picture of it above), the only caterpillar I found on goldenrod today:

Many of the caterpillars that feed on goldenrod are quite small, and in colors that blend in with the plant. This one doesn't blend in very well, in spite of its yellow markings. Brown hooded owlet moth caterpillar. It is often the case that bright, showy caterpillars become drab, brown moths, and this is an example of that phenomenon.

How about some more flies?

I think this is a tachinid fly.

A pair of thick-headed flies, apparently practicing their circus act...

I got a better shot of them when they flew to a raspberry leaf. I know they look like wasps, but they are flies.

Another unfortunate wasp that didn't notice the predator lurking. To see the predator, you have to check out Arachnid Appreciation today...

Another predator, a lady beetle

So, to recap, on the goldenrod today I saw many species of bees; many species of flies (some of which I couldn't even show you because I didn't get good enough pictures); one species of moth, but with many specimens; several butterflies (but one species, I think), a caterpillar; ants; a few species of beetles; ambush bug adults and a nypmph; a plant bug; wasps; and a mosquito. Also a couple of spiders, to be shown later...

Not EVERY bug I saw today was on goldenrod:

Not a bug. Not even an insect. It is an arthropod, though. Millipede

In my last post I showed a picture of a monarch butterfly egg. As I expected, the next day on my walk I found that it had hatched, and saw the tiny caterpillar. But it was raining, so I didn't have my camera. Then yesterday I wasn't able to venture into the woods to check on it. Today I found the leaf damage it had done in its first meals, but no caterpillar. Sigh...
 

In the meadow in the woods I saw quite a few grasshoppers and katydids, but they were too quick at disappearing into the tall grass for me to get pictures, except for this one.

Ugh:

Here's something I have learned about spotted lanterflies–they are difficult to catch. Things I have read on the internet make it sound like it's so easy–hold the mouth of a bottle over them and they will jump in! Well, that make work on a big tree trunk, but on small plants they just scoot around the stem, or... jump before you get a chance to get a bottle over them. I saw about twenty of them today. There's more every day.

As for the other wildlife:

In the last couple of weeks I have seen a lot of little American toads around, but they always hop/crawl away too fast for me to get a picture. Today, I finally got one that let me take a couple of shots.

And speaking of things that hop...

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Spiders like to hang out on the goldenrod, too.

As this wasp found out. The crab spider blends in well.

Themes

 I had to check the date on my last post to figure out when I posted–I didn't realize it had been so long. I just couldn't cope with the weather. For the last two weeks it's been the kind of weather that keeps me in the house (heat waves) or keeps me from bringing my camera out (rain), and sometimes both. Last week we had a heat wave, with thunderstorms in the evening. It's been a frustrating couple of weeks, weather-wise. But today there was a break in the rain, and it was cool outside (68ºF when I went for my walk–quite a contrast with Monday's 90ºF), so I took my camera for a walk.

For most of the walk it felt like a waste of effort to be carrying the camera, because I didn't see a lot of bugs–it had rained in the morning, and was overcast and chilly, and the bugs didn't want to be out and about, I suppose. But then I found a bug I had never seen before, which you know is rare for me these days, and that made it worth it. I almost didn't bother to try to take its picture, because it didn't look like much at first (and I thought it might be a moth fly, and they are very uncooperative, often not worth the effort to try to get a picture), and the lighting was bad with the overcast sky, but I made the effort, and it cooperated, and so here is Backyard Bug of the Day:

According to the internet, this is Anotia uhleri, a species of derbid planthopper. When I was looking at it through my camera, I was mystified, with no idea what it was. Some kind of hopper was something I considered, but also I thought it might be a type of fly, or even a strange moth. 

Other than that, there were basically two themes to today's bug walk. First, Ailanthus webworm moths:

They were everywhere. Well, everywhere there was goldenrod blooming.

I think I saw more ailanthus webworm moths than I saw in the previous decade of bug photography combined. 

Goldenrod is just generally popular, but even in this shot where I was taking an establishing shot of a fly, notice all the ailanthus webworm moths on the flowers.

These various pictures were taken all over our property, in the field, along paths, in meadows in the woods. Of course, what all of these locations have in common are ailanthus trees. (aka tree of heaven, or my name for it, stinky tree).

Ailanthus is the host plant for the ailanthus webworm moth:

They have communal webs with multiple instars of caterpillars in them. I have never found information about how their life cycle plays out that way, but...

... in addition to caterpillars you can also find multiple chrysalides in the webs.

 Like I said, goldenrod is popular with lots of insects, including some that don't feed on the flowers, but on the things that feed on the flowers. After all, if you want to eat insect, a great place to hang out is the place where the insects go to eat. Just ask this jagged ambush bug nymph:

I didn't see a lot of bees today, because they don't really love this yucky, rainy weather. But they generally love goldenrod.

As do various species of looper caterpillars.

 The other theme for the day was crickets and katydids:

I found this cricket near my back door when I got home from running errands. This cricket is why I brought my camera out in the first place today. I saw a lot of crickets and katydids today.

Then in a patch of weedy grass (or rather, invasive species grass) in a clearing in the woods my husband noticed a bunch of insects, which turned out to be a LOT of crickets and katydids. 

The grass is thick and tall, and leafy, and the crickets and katydids had lots of hiding places, so they were hard to spot, and easy to lose when they wanted to be lost. So I didn't get many pictures.

And the pictures mostly look like this.

This cricket is missing a hind leg. It can still get around, though.

It's a pity I didn't see any grasshoppers today. That patch of grass is perfect grasshopper habitat, and then I could have had all three odonata types.

So, what else did I see on my walk today...

Nymph of some kind of hemiptera. Leaf footed bug, probably. It's big for a nymph, it's probably going to become an adult at its next moult.

These beetle larvae are still feeding on the cucamelon leaves in my garden...

... and the chrysalis on a bean leaf has turned a darker color, so that is probably going to eclose soon.

Tiny moth on grape leaf

This squirrel was noisily gnawing on a butternut.

People are so afraid of these wasps, but this one was quite placid...

... and when I startled it by breaking of a twig to get a closer look, it just scurried around to the back side of the leaf and peeked over at me. How could you not love that little face?

Cicada exuvia–the shed skin left behind when the nymph molted to become an adult.

Scorpionfly. I think this is a female; the males have a longer, curlier abdomen/tail. I saw a couple of these today.

Milkweed tussock moth caterpillars. Soon these will all decide that they've had enough togetherness and wander off alone. I have had many broods of these on the milkweed near my back porch this year, sometimes finding them communally like this, and sometimes finding just one caterpillar off on its own.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a colony (I don't know if that's the right word) of beech blight aphids on a branch of a beech tree. It's the first and only place I have seen them this year. They were all over the beech trees in the woods last year. From what I have read, they periodically have huge population booms for a couple of years, and that is obviously what happened last year, and to a smaller extent the year before. I don't know if the reason I am not seeing them this year is because their boom is over, or because the beech trees are suffering from beech leaf disease, and that is somehow affecting the aphids. I hope the former, but if the beech trees die, inevitably that will affect these aphids:

They are not all as fuzzy as they were when I found them a couple of weeks ago, and they were not as active; another common name for these insects is boogie woogie aphids, because when they feel threatened they wave their fuzzy butts around, which makes it look like this is a giant insect dance party. These didn't feel much like dancing today, which could be because of the grim weather.

Here you can see a few of them excreting drops of honeydew. These insects are unpopular with people who have beech trees in their yards, because when you get these population booms, collectively they excrete a lot of honeydew, which is basically sugar water, and it covers anything below the colony with sticky fluid which then causes a black fungus to grow. I admit, it's unsightly. But kind of interesting. 

Monarch butterfly egg! I saw this a couple of days ago on a walk without my camera, and have been waiting for a chance to get a better look at it to be sure it was a monarch egg. It has changed color in the interim, which means either it is going to hatch soon (the dark spot is probably the caterpillar's head), or it has been infected with something (which is possible because there's more dark spots than just the one that is probably the caterpillar's head. I hope it hatches and thrives. None of the other monarch caterpillars I have seen this year have made it past the earliest instars. I have seen a lot of milkweed leaves with leaf damage such as would be made by a first instar monarch, but nothing beyond that. It's discouraging. So I hope this one defies the odds and becomes a butterfly.

The Bad Part of My Bug Walk:

The invasive ailanthus tree is not just host to the ailanthus webworm moth, it is also the favored host of the horrible spotted lanternfly. This one is on a goldenrod plant, but this particular clearing has a lot of ailanthus sapplings–I cut them down, and they grow back.

I was thinking happily the other day that I haven't seen any of these in a couple of weeks, but then I realized that I also haven't been out in my backyard as much in the last couple of weeks, between going away for a few days, and the bad weather...

So now there are adult spotted lanternflies, in addition to the nymphs. I found several of each, nymphs and adults. I tried catching them with the bottle method you see online, and found that it doesn't work as well on skinny sapplings as it purportedly does on bigger tree trunks. But I caught a few. It's too bad they are so harmful, because they are cool looking bugs. I don't know where they get the lanternfly part of their name, but you can see where the spotted part comes in.

I was going to add all the pictures I took on my phone in the last couple of weeks on walks without my camera, but it's late, and I'm tired... If I feel motivated tomorrow maybe I'll just do a post of all of those...

Arachnid Appreciation:

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This nursery web spider has been hanging out on this milkweed plant for at least a week.

I walked into this spined micrathena's web, but fortunately was able to back out without breaking it.

A couple of days ago I noticed what I thought was a monarch butterfly egg on the underside of a milkweed leaf, and I have been wanting to bring my camera out for days to be able to look at it closer with my macro lens to find out of that's what it was. Today I had the chance, and was not very happy to find a spider on the same leaf. I didn't want the caterpillar to hatch and immediately get eaten by the spider. So, I relocated the spider to another plant nearby. None of the monarch caterpillars I have seen this year have made it past the early instars. I would like this one to have a chance of lasting more than a minute.

Uncooperative spider...