Impersonation

 Today's Backyard Bug of the Day has something in common with another Backyard Bug of the Day from earlier this week–when I first saw it I thought it was something else, because it is a mimic. Bugs (and other animals) sometimes try to look like something they are not, generally to avoid being seen or noticed, either because they don't want to be eaten, or their ability to capture food depends on prey not seeing them or recognizing what they are. There are benefits, for example, in looking like leaf, either to avoid being eaten by something that doesn't recognize you as food, or to capture unsuspecting insects that come close enough to be captured because they think you are just a leaf. But for insects at least, sometimes that mimicry can be much more visible, like the two Backyard Bugs of the Day in question.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is another yellow-jacked mimic, a fly that looks like an aggressive wasp. Pretending to be something that is dangerous, in this case something that stings, is a great way to keep predators large and small from trying to eat you. The bold stripes of known stingers make this fly look like it has a menacing defense system, when in reality it is harmless.

 It is an effective disguise; I approached it warily, thinking it was a big wasp, and knowing it could be aggressive. But this fly, Milesia virginensis  can't sting, and once I realized that, I had no qualms about a close-up.

 

Here you can see how big it is compared to a honeybee. There is an actual wasp in this picture, too.
 

Somewhere in this area there is a bee keeper whose honey is going to be flavored with Japanese knotweed. There were a lot of honeybees on these plants.

Wasp

  The bugs were back on the autumn joy sedum today:

Mostly bumblebees, and a few honeybees, and, as you can see, ants.

The large milkweed bug in the middle appears to have recently molted, and has not developed its colors yet.

 

Ants with aphids on wild lettuce.

Bumblebees on thistle:

 

Can you spot the insect that is hiding among the many spikes of the thistle plant?

It's almost in the middle of the picture...

Tree cricket

Backyard Bird of the Day:

Hummingbird feeding in the vegetable garden. I think it is a female ruby throat.
 

 Today was a wonderfully spidery day, so I found a number of specimens for Arachnid Appreciation:

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Nursery web spiderling
 

Flower crab spider with fly prey on Japanese knotweed. Wherever there are a lot of insects to prey on, there are predators lurking.

A couple of non-spider arachnids:

 

Can you see the mite next to the bee?

 

Harvestman hiding
 

Web Users?

 If insects could use the internet, like the world wide spider web maybe, I would swear that they read my blog from yesterday and were determined to prove that I am wrong. I saw several cabbage white butterflies today, which flitted around me as if to remind me that I don't only see orange and black butterflies. They didn't pose for me, though, no doubt because they were offended at being so callously forgotten yesterday (which isn't really true. I didn't forget them. I just didn't mention them. And, by the way, I did not see a red-spotted purple, so...). And then, because I said that there were no red-legged grasshoppers around lately...

 Today I found three of them within one small garden bed:

 Then to further prove me wrong, one of the grasshoppers I keep seeing in front of the house (in the road, actually) let me get close enough to take this picture:

I know, it's terrible, but I have been seeing these for over a month in the road in front of my house, and whenever I get within about ten feet of them they fly away. Generally what happens is they fly a little bit farther down the road, so just because I am walking that way it's like I am chasing them... which I sort of am, because I want to take a picture. Then when I get to the end of the road, they fly off somewhere else. There was about a two week period in which this happened every day. I kept hoping to get a shot for Backyard Bug of the Day, and it never happened.

And speaking of...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Caterpillar tucked into a groove in tree bark. I tried looking it up and failed to identify it.

Today when I went out to get the mail, I checked for insects on the autumn joy sedum as I walked by. Strangely, there was not a single insect on any of the flowers. Then when I started my bug walk, again I checked for bugs on the autumn joy sedum, and there were none there. Not a one. These flowers were covered with bumblebees yesterday, and I took pictures of moths on them last night. And today, they were abandoned. Finally at the end of my bug walk I found one, solitary fly:

Maybe all of the bugs were on the Japanese knotweed. Certainly a lot of them were. It was a veritable swarm of bees, wasps, and flies. It was warm today, and that seems to make insects energetic sometimes, so photography was mainly a failure, but I caught a couple in flight:

 

Sharpshooter

 

 Leaf hopper

Arachnid Appreciation:

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You can't really tell from this picture, but this flower crab spider really did look quite convincingly like it was just part of this thistle. The whole plant is spike, and the spider looked like part of the sepal.

Scarcity

 Today's Backyard Bug of the Day is an insect that has been strangely scarce this year. Normally I see a lot of grasshoppers around this time, and for weeks before this I would have been seeing grasshopper nymphs, but that has not been the case this year. I only saw two or three nymphs, and today I saw only my second red-legged grasshopper of the season. There is another species of grasshopper that I have seen multiple times (but never got close enough to get even a bad picture), but no red-legged, which is the most common species in my backyard most years. Obviously I have no idea why. It is concerning, however.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Red-legged grasshopper

Other Bugs:

 

Jagged assassin bug with potter's wasp prey, on goldenrod

 

Pearl crescent butterfly. I do not like to sound churlish, but why do I only ever get pictures of orange butterflies? Particularly orange and black butterflies? That's two of my three least favorite colors. I am glad that any butterfly at all will cooperate with me, but why is it only ever the orange ones? Why can't I ever get a good picture of a red-spotted purple, which is actually blue? I don't think I have even seen red-spotted purples a dozen times, and I have never gotten even an okay picture of one. But monarchs, viceroys, pearl crescents, American coppers... but I shouldn't complain. It is nice that they will sit still for a decent photo once in a while. I should just resign myself to never even getting a good look at a red-spotted purple.

 

If you were to take a census of the bugs in my backyard based on the pictures in this blog you would get the erroneous idea that I never see any wasps. For some reason they have been exceptionally skittish this year, so I haven't been able to photograph them. I got this one today on Japanese knotweed, and unfortunately invasive plant that right now is very popular with pollinators–as you can see from the fact that the wasp has company in the form of two flies. The second fly may not be obvious, way over on the left side of the stem. The other, a tachinid fly, is a rather large fly species.

This is not a good picture of any of them, but there are four different species of insects here.

 

Honey bee

 

I keep expecting to find a bunch of adult large milkweed bugs on the plants, but it hasn't happened yet.

I went out after dark again to see what I could find on the flowers:

A couple of moths on autumn joy sedum, both of which were rather nondescript...

And on the goldenrod:

This bumblebee was not just hanging around in a stupor for the night; it was moving.

Katydid

Moth

The lack of blog for yesterday is due to the unusual circumstance of it raining all day. It didn't rain much, mostly just barely drizzling, but not camera weather.

 I had a close encounter with a spider this morning. As I was lying in bed thinking about how much I did not want to get up and face the day, I heard a very slight sound next to me, as if something had landed on the mattress. I turned to look, knowing the possibility of what I had just heard, and instantly having it confirmed: a spider had dropped beside me on the bed. There was a time when I would have jumped out of bed at that instant, and the only thing that would have made me hesitate in killing the spider would have been not wanting a squished spider on the sheet. I used to kill every spider I saw in my house. Eventually I stopped doing that, but I would still kill spiders I found in the bedroom. Then I reprieved most spiders in the bedroom, but not any that were dangling over the bed. But lately, I have been enjoying watching spiders on the skylight above the bed. I just sort of assumed that they would stay there. Anyway, I let them wander there, never once even considering killing them. I did not freak out when the spider sat down beside me, and had I had any curds and whey, I would not have spilled it. But I did say to the spider, "You can't be here." Then I gently captured it in a tissue and released it out the window. I didn't go get my camera first, because when you have a spider in your bed you don't let it out of your sight, in case it crawls somewhere you definitely don't want to find a spider. Arachnid Appreciation: 

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Jumping spider
 

Ology

 Today is the first day of meteorological autumn, but based on the number of bugs I have been finding lately you would think we were much closer to winter. I don't have an explanation for it, other than maybe the drought has affected insect populations? I don't know. As it says in the introduction of this blog, I am not an entomologist or biologist. I am also not a climatologist. Nor any kind of ologist at all. And I supposed it doesn't really matter that I don't know why things are the way they are, but I have an endless supply of curiosity, and I like to know and understand what's going on around me. My backyard is an endlessly fascinating place. It was more so, though, when there were more insects to be found in it.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Some kind of looper caterpillar, dangling from a thread, pretending to be a twig. I don't usually bother to look up loopers, but this one seems to have distinctive markings, so I decided to try, and was unable to figure out what it is.

 

Other Bugs:

Ailanthus webworm moth on wild lettuce. The flowers have bloomed already, but for some reason bees and other bugs have been all over the plants and their unopened seed heads.

Immature katydid, female. You can tell it is immature because it does not have fully developed wings, and it is female because that brown thing looping up in the back is an ovipositor. She's also missing her right hind leg. It did not prevent her from walking away from the camera, although it may have prevented her from leaping.

 

This fall webworm has molted–the exuvia it has just shed is right beside it–and has much longer hair than it did yesterday (which you can see on yesterday's blog).

 

Weevil

Some kind of plant bug on thistle

Planthoppers on thistle leaf. Thistles are so spiky even touching the leaves hurts. It doesn't seem to bother the bugs, though.

 

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Around this time last year the same kind of spider showed up in a web on the front of my house. This one is not exactly in the same location, but close. I don't know what kind of spider this is, but it looks a bit like a strawberry, so in my mind it is a strawberry orb weaver.