Night Bugs

We went out last night and got home a couple of minutes before midnight. There were a lot of bugs on the front porch, so I went in to get my camera. According to my watch, it was still about a minute before midnight when I finished, which would make the pictures I took yesterday's pictures, but according to the camera's timestamp for the pictures, all but three of them were taken after midnight. I should have gone with what my watch said, but I wanted to leave those pictures for today, so... that's what I did.

Right now I am sitting here near an open window, listening to a cricket singing while I type. It is a lovely, summery feeling.

Anyway, the reason I wanted to leave the pictures for today was because I had already chosen a Backyard Bug of the Day for yesterday, and I found two good Backyard Bug of the Day candidates on the porch, so rather than have three yesterday, I am now going to have two today.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 Moth that looks like ugly 70s wallpaper. It looks good on the moth, though. New species for me and my backyard, I am pretty sure.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 A new-to-me species of tree hopper. Two new bugs for one day!

There were other bugs on the porch, some moths, of course:

 A cockroach (Fun fact! I recently had allergy tests and found out that I am allergic to cockroaches. I didn't even know that was a thing they tested for. I assume it is probably their droppings that I am allergic to, and anyway, I was not worried about taking this picture, and did not sneeze afterward). Not the kitchen pest kind.

 A beetle that was a bit uncooperative.

Technically, the first bug I saw today during the day was on the porch, too. Or the porch railing, anyway:

 Robber fly. It was raining, so I wasn't going to do a bug walk, but when I opened the front door for some fresh air I saw this on the porch railing.

Later, when it stopped raining and I went out with my camera I found this one, with prey.

 Eastern tent caterpillars on their tent, which appears to be full of frass.

 Hopper of some kind

 Tortoise beetle

And now, for a bit of drama:

 A bug of some sort, walking around on a fern. And what is that other thing on the fern?

 It's an assassin bug. The assassin bug has spotted the other bug (I don't know what kind of bug it is, let's call it a fly for the sake of this story). The fly doesn't seem to have noticed the assassin bug, even though it is extremely obvious.

The fly begins to walk toward the assassin bug...

 Closer... the assassin bug reaches out...

 The fly turns toward the assassin, which is anxious to grab some prey...

 Nope, the fly veers off in another direction. (At the bottom of the picture you can see the previous prey of the assassin bug. It's not starving there).

 Drat! The one that got away!

 The assassin bug kind of looks like it is considering going after the other bug, but it didn't.

 Sawfly larva

 Caterpillar

 Katydid nymph

 Weevil

Sawfly larvae

This has been a very spidery few days, and today the trend continued. I saw a lot of spiders, several of which I have featured the last couple of days, but some others, too, including one that I am pretty sure is a new species for me. Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I posted this one yesterday; I think it is a cross spider. Today it was dismantling its web, and for the first time it was on the other side so I got a look at it from underneath.

How about a closeup of that face?

 

 I think this is an orchard spider

 Jumping spidere

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

 It's a bit weird. I wish I had gotten a better look at it, but it was not keen on being looked at.

 Daddy-long-legs, aka harvestman. Not a spider.

 My husband found this spider in the house. He captured it in the bug vacuum and left it on my computer desk. Ah, romance!

An Incomplete Picture

There's a lot of discussion about how people's lives as depicted on social media are not really representative of their real lives. They are carefully curated to show you only the most interesting things. Some people see this as a problem, but I don't. The interesting things in people's lives are, well, the interesting things. I don't need to see the mundane things in their lives, they are probably not that different from the mundane things in my life. I don't post on facebook that I just started the dishwasher. Nobody cares about that but me, and it's not even interesting to me. So what if the online version of someone's life is more exciting than their real life? If they don't want to share the bad or boring parts, that's fine with me.

This blog is also not really an accurate depiction of what it's like in my backyard, but for a sort of different reason. I don't manage to get pictures of a large number of the bugs in my backyard. Or if I do get a picture, it might not be good enough for me to share. You will never know everything I see out there. For instance, I see quite a lot of butterflies, but hardly any of them end up on this blog. They don't pose for pictures very often. I see WAY more ants than ever make it on here, because it would be boring to take pictures of ants all the time. A lot of things are too active, too fast, too inconveniently located for me to get pictures. Sometimes they are too boring for me to even want to try. So this blog is a highly curated version of my backyard, although not always because I don't want to show you things. I do my best to make it seem interesting. But if you really want the picture on how many bugs are out in the the world, you have to go out and have a look for yourself.

But here's a little taste of how buggy my backyard was today:

 There's another insect, an ant, just out of the picture.

But this is where most of the bugs were today, or many of them anyway, on this patch of milkweed. No monarch caterpillars, but lots of other things, some of which I managed to get pictures of:

Including Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Saddled leafhopper. This is an unusual picture because not only do I rarely see these, but almost every one I have ever seen has been on the front porch, attracted to the light. I have only seen a couple of them actually on a plant somewhere.

Other Bugs on the Milkweed:

 Candy striped leaf hopper

 Rove beetle, with its wings not completely tucked away, and do you see the yellow dots along the edge of the leaf?

Springtails

 There, the wings are all put away now.

 Better look at the springtails.

 Long-legged flies

Click beetle

Weevil

Not ALL of the bugs were on milkweed...

When the eastern tent caterpillars are done growing and are ready to pupate they don't do it on the tree where they hatched and spent their caterpillarhood eating, they wander off to find another place. Some of them have started to do this:

 Like this one on the blueberry bush. Oh, by the way, it rained this morning.

 Caterpillar close-up

 This one was still on the tent, and there were quite a few wriggling around inside.

Another one that has gone for a walk

 Sawfly eggs, which are laid inside a leaf

 On the back of another leaf on the same plant, they have hatched. I think some of these are very newly hatched, but you can see some have been eating already.

 On another tree

I found nine species of spiders in the backyard today for Arachnid Appreciation:
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These first two are on milkweed plants, because there's obviously a lot of bugs there for them to eat:

Bowl-and-doily spider

On milkweeed

Playing hide and seek...

 With aphid prey, I think

 This spider has had a web in the same spot for a couple of weeks. I wish I could get a better picture, but the location of the web doesn't really allow it.