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Here's what I found on my bug walk today:

Beetle
Caterpillar
Spider
Caterpillar
Spider
Spider
Butterfly
Bee
Beetle
Weevil
Aphids/Hopper/Ant (These were all together)
Spider
Moth
Spider
Spider
Beetle
Spider
Caterpillar
Spider
Hopper
Hopper
Beetle
Bug
Caterpillar
Larva
Butterfly
Spider
Fly
Katydid
Spider
Fly
Katydid
Springtail
Beetle
?
Bug
Bug
Bug
Beetle
Caterpillar
Spider
Spider

Which is to say, I found a lot of spiders today. And a lot of caterpillars. Actually, that's a pretty impressive list overall, considering this is really just the list of the things I took pictures of. Otherwise it would say Fly, Fly, Fly, Fly, Fly...

You may be wondering about the "?" That would be the Backyard Bug of the Day:

 When I first spotted this I thought it was an ant, and wasn't going to give it a second look, but that snout caught my eye and I had to look closer. It looks a bit like Gonzo the Great from The Muppets. Or like a cross between an ant and an elephant. At first I was sure this was something new for me, but now I am wondering if I have seen it before in an adult stage, because this looks a bit like a species of assassin bug, but not exactly. So I don't know.

It definitely has the mouth parts of a Hemiptera.

All right, on to the rest of that list of insects (and arachnids)! I think tonight I will just post them in the order that I took the pictures (except for putting the spiders at the end) - although I am not going to post them all, because some of the pictures didn't come out well. I have actually found a few more bugs since I started this post, because some cool bugs were attracted to the porch light tonight.

Random Bugs:

 Caterpillar. This was tiny, the kind of tiny where you don't even know if you're looking at a caterpillar, or if the edge of the leaf is just dried out. I am hoping this sticks around in the same spot for a while so I can see what it looks like when it gets bigger.

 Caterpillar that is doomed.

That's a LOT of parasite eggs for such a small caterpillar.

 You may have noticed that I haven't posted many bees lately. Actually, I don't know if I have posted any bees lately. That is because there haven't been many bees around, which may be because I have been doing my bug walks fairly late in the day, and bees are more fond of the sunny, earlier parts of the day. But here's a bee.

 Weevil

 So many bugs here - a hopper, and a whole lot of aphids, with one of the ants that is attending to them all.

 Moth

 Forest tent caterpillar

 Hopper

 Beetle

 Some sort of immature Hemiptera. I am guessing some sort of leaf bug.

 Caterpillar.

 Here's another caterpillar like the one yesterday, but the colors are kind of different, mostly the brownish red. Other than color, it looks a lot like the caterpillar just above.

 Sawfly larva

 European skipper

Katydid nymph

 Another katydid nmyph

 Can you see the springtails on this flower?

 One of them hopped away, but here's the other.

 Tiny beetle on the book I was reading on the back porch after my bug walk.

 I forget what this is called, but it's a Hemiptera that feeds on grass seeds.

 Different Hemiptera that feeds on grass seeds

 Immature Hemiptera feeding on grass seeds

 My husband came home with a stowaway on his collar.

 I transferred it to a tree. This looks a lot like the yoga caterpillar (THAT'S NOT ITS REAL NAME! DON'T GO THINKING THERE IS SUCH A THING AS A YOGA CATERPILLAR JUST BECAUSE YOU SAW IT ON THE INTERNET!), which I think is a copper underwing moth. But I haven't actually looked at the two to compare them. The yoga one was not there today, not that I could see, though it is basically the same color as the leaves it was feeding on.

 I think this is a robber fly. You can barely see this, but it has another bug in its mouth.

For some reason the back porch light doesn't usually attract a lot of bugs, but tonight it did. I didn't take pictures of most of them, because the non-descript little moths weren't all that photogenic, but here's a few...

 Visitor on the screen door - a cockroach. Not one of the kitchen invader kinds, one of the eat-dead-leaves-in-the-woods kind. This was on the storm door.

 Moth on the storm door.

 Fish fly

I have a few more spiders to add to the tally for the last three days, although not all of these are new sightings for the time period. I just counted them - 7 new species today, so that brings the total for the three days to 20 species of spiders! That's a lot to appreciate. Arachnid Appreciation:
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 This spider was very protective of this folded up leaf. I am guessing it has laid eggs in there. It is a new species for the week (well, for this three day period in which I am counting spider species. You get the idea).

I think this is the same kind of spider. It is one of my favorites, though it shows to best advantage on a branch or twig where it can blend in. The way it stretches its legs out in front of it, when it is on a branch it is very well camouflaged. Not so much here, or on the folded leaf above.

 Funnel web - another new one for the week.

 Another new one...

This one was very fond of the drop-off-the-leaf-attached-to-a-thread method of escaping the camera.

 Here's the bowl and doily spider from the other day.

 Another new one - a crab spider

 Another new one - don't know what this one is.

 Another crab spider, missing a couple of legs. That seems to be a very common problem for crab spiders these days.

 I posted this one just because the reflections of the ring flash on its thorax look like a skull. Or vaguely Darth Vaderish.

 Six-spotted orb weaver

 I think I spotted this one yesterday.

 Spiders are not often among the insects attracted to the porch light, but given how many other bugs are, you'd think they would be there just for the easy hunting. I think this is a new one for the week.

Life Cycle

Ooooooh dear. You know how I am always saying on this blog that you can't trust the internet? That any information you find on the internet is suspect? That any idiot (like me) could be in charge of a website, and present information that they really don't know anything about, and if they have a nice looking website, you might think that means that they know what they are talking about, but you shouldn't assume that? Well... don't trust the internet. The internet is often wrong. I have been trying to find an identification for today's Backyard Bug of the Day, which is a caterpillar. There is NO good source on the internet for caterpillar identification, I can tell you that right now. And frankly, none of the books I have at my disposal are all that good, either, including two caterpillar books that I have in my possession that belong to a friend. For some reason I really want to find out what kind of caterpillar this is, even though I normally don't go to this kind of effort, so I have been looking at a lot of sites that claim to be sources of that kind of information. In reality most of the sites have pictures of about 20 caterpillars, which is so far from being comprehensive that I wonder why they even bother. One of these sites gave a little blurb of information about each caterpillar, and under the picture of the saddleback caterpillar it said that the saddleback caterpillar is actually a slug, which is a mollusk. No. No. No. No. No. No. NO. NO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The saddleback caterpillar is a caterpillar. It is the larva of a moth, specifically the Acharia stimulea moth (I just looked that up on the internet, so don't be too sure about it). It is an insect of the order Lepidoptera. It is from a family of caterpillars that are called slug-like caterpillars because of the way they move - like slugs (But not even exactly like slugs, I don't think. I think there is a different mechanism to the way they do that. But don't trust me on that). They don't glide along on a layer of slime like slugs do. They don't have the same kind of prolegs that other caterpillars do. If you want to see how they move, you can check out THIS VIDEO that I posted a couple of years ago. But saddleback caterpillars are not actually slugs. They are INSECTS. They are ARTHROPODS. They are NOT MOLLUSKS. They are not closely related to mollusks. They have nothing in common with mollusks other than not having a spinal cord. And reading that extremely WRONG fact on that website just about made my head explode. So don't trust the internet. Except for two things - you can trust me when I say not to trust the internet. And you can trust me when I say that saddleback caterpillars ARE NOT MOLLUSKS.

Sigh. I also found a few other caterpillars that were misidentified. How am I supposed to learn anything if the information is either not there or incorrect? How am I supposed to trust the identification of the other 19 caterpillars on a site if I know for a fact that one of them is wrong?

By the way, I misidentified some forest tent moth caterpillars in recent posts as eastern tent moth caterpillars, so I have gone back and fixed them. You may have noticed that a lot of times when I identify things I say I think this is such-and-such, because I don't know for sure. And there is a disclaimer right in the intro to this blog that says not to trust any of my identifications. This is why. I don't know what I am talking about a lot of the time.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 After all that, I am sorry to report that I have no idea what kind of caterpillar this is. I have looked in every bug book at my disposal, and done a lot of searching on the internet, and I still can't find it. It was small, about an inch long, so it is possible that this is an early instar and will look different later in its development, but I still can't believe that I can't find it anywhere. Obviously, it exists. I just don't know what it is.

 Definitely a caterpillar - check out those 5 pairs of prolegs.

 

I discovered a theme to my insect observations in the backyard today - The Insect Life Cycle:

 This is how it begins. (These are two hoverflies. The female is the one holding onto the leaf. Not as impressive as the two hoverflies I saw mating aerially the other day).

 Beetles

Next: Eggs

 I didn't find any female bugs laying eggs, but I did find two kinds of eggs today.

Then: Larvae or nymphs:

 Beetle larvae

 Sawfly larva. I wonder if this is a later development of the one I saw last week that looked like this but with white spikes.

 Katydid nymph

In case you are wondering what the difference is between a nymph and a larva, larvae go through complete metamorphosis. They look nothing like the adult form of the insect, and they go into a pupal stage in which they completely change from the larva to the imago (adult). Nymphs kind of resemble the imago stage of the insect, and will molt several times but not go through the complete metamorphosis of pupation. 

 Caterpillars are, of course, among the most famous larvae (and are not mollusks, no matter what anyone tells you). This one was doing yoga again today. This might be a copper underwing moth caterpillar.

 And this I think is the eastern tent caterpillar.

 Not as blue as the forest tent caterpillar, and much hairier.

 Hoverfly larva

 Hoverfly larva and aphid nymph. This is a dangerous situation for the aphid nymph - some species of hoverfly larva eat aphids.

Some nymphs are looked after by their parents... and ants. Not aunts, they are not related.

 Nymphs in different stages of development.

 

 I suspect that the color of this one could mean it has just molted, or is just about to. But don't trust me on that, I am just guessing.

 I think this one is in one of the in-between stages, still a nymph, but getting close to imago stage. I think this might be the same kind of bug that was on those flowers last week (Yes, I know, that was completely unhelpful information).

And now random adult bugs, because I am done with this theme:

 Lady beetle

 Weevil

 Hopper

 Moth

 There is a group of moths called owlet moths. I have no idea if this is one of them, but the reason I brought it up is because I think that owlet moths should be ones like this that look like tiny owls when you look at them upside down. Sadly, that is not what owlet moths are, and from what I read about them, I can't even tell you what it is that makes an owlet moth an owlet moth (most of them are nocturnal, but not all). But this one looks like an owl.

 Hopper

 Beetle

Yesterday I found nine different species of spiders in my backyard. Today I found four that I didn't  find yesterday, which makes for 13 different species of spiders over 2 days. Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I think I was wrong yesterday, this is the species of spider I found all those babies of on Mother's Day weekend.

 Back on our theme of earlier, here's a spider with her egg sac.

 How could anybody NOT love a purple metallic jumping spider? So elegant!

 Another jumping spider

This one was neighbors with the yoga caterpillar (that is NOT what the caterpillar's real name is).