Matchy Matchy

Today the blog is going to feature a color scheme because every bug that I found was either green, yellow, or brown. Some of them have accents of other colors, but there was definitely a theme going on in the backyard today. I don't know if they all called each other this morning, or what, but everyone went along with it.

I found a Backyard Bug of the Day pretty quickly after I went outside for my (first) bug walk, but I still had to use some patience to get the picture. I was walking around and saw a bug flying near me, and though it is very hard to get any kind of detail from a flying bug, it looked like it might be a yellow bug, and that intrigued me, so I watched it and followed it until it landed. I do this sometimes, but it is not often successful (especially where butterflies are concerned), because sometimes the bugs will land, but sometimes they will fly away where I can't follow. After three summers of photographing bugs I am getting a little better at knowing when not to bother to try for things, but this bug I had a feeling about, and it eventually landed somewhere where I could get a picture.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 It would appear from my book that this is a Spotted Cucumber Beetle, but I have to say that in showing up in the yard now it has missed its chance. They cucumbers in the garden are dead.

 A little weirdness happened at this point as I was taking pictures. I didn't see what happened as it happened, and am only piecing things together from the pictures, but it would seem that the bug didn't like it when I got close.

 It scooted around on the stick it was on, and left behind some yellow residue.

 This was right before it flew away.

 A few minutes later I either spotted a different one in a short ways away, or found the same one again.

And I spotted another when I went for a second bug walk after I got home from our afternoon adventures.

Note - the beetle is yellow.

Random Bugs:

 Brown (also, this pose is something of a theme today).

Green... wasp.

 Green with orange.

 Yellow with orange.

 This poor caterpillar has some wasp eggs on it now. It's doomed.

 Green with orange. Assassin bug

 Green - This is the best picture I have ever taken of a buffalo treehopper. It was in the sun, it sat still - perfect! This one is going in the calendar this year for sure!

Cool eye.

 Brown, and hiding very well against the brown blotch on this leaf.

 Brown with yellow and red. I was just thinking yesterday that I have not been seeing grasshoppers lately, and I should. And here's one now!

I must have taken at least 15 shots before I noticed the katydid about an inch away from the caterpillar I was focused on. Yes, I am very observant. Also, the katydid is green and brown.

 The katydid moved away before I could get a good picture to show how close these were.

That Tree is still THE place to be if you're a stinkbug. There are five that I can see here (brown and green).

Note what has happened at the bottom of the picture.

The green stinkbug above has excreted a rather large drop of honeydew... right onto the smaller, brown stinkbug. Sadly, stinkbugs don't drink honeydew as some other insects do.

 I have been going along for years thinking this yellow caterpillar is a Dagger Moth Caterpillar, but in one of my bug books there is one that looks just like this that is a Spotted Apatelodes Caterpillar, so now I don't know.

 I might be stretching it to say this sharpshooter is brown, but I am saying it anyway. It also has some yellow on it, so it counts.

 Yellow bumble bee. I know I posted a lot of these the other day, but sometimes you just shoot the fish in the barrel because you can.

 Brown... whatever this thing is. It's not an insect, but some sort of non-insect arthropod. It's creepy, whatever it is. And I just have to say, it stinks to be an aphid.

 I think this is a Twenty-spotted Lady Beetle. And it's light brown.

 Of course the Saddleback Caterpillar is green and brown. And it has been motionless on this leaf for over 24 hours. Getting ready to moult again? It has been on quite the eating spree lately.

 Some kind of looper - brown and yellow.

Green leaf hopper.

Even the spiders stuck to the color scheme. Arachnid Appreciation:
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 A few yellow legs...

 This is the first of the two interesting spiders from the other day. It turns out it was still in the same spot, I just was looking in the wrong place yesterday.

 This is the underside of the spider. It is on the other side of the web.

 Here's the other side (brown). I love the way spiders try to hide under their own legs, as if that means I can't see their huge, exposed abdomen because they have covered their small cephalothorax.

 Brown and pale yellow

Do you have any idea how much I would LOVE to actually see a spider shedding its skin? To see it pulling its legs out of its former skin?

Yellow and brown.

Trilling

Summer is back for a brief visit. Hot, humid (but not terribly so), and cacophonous. There are some pretty weird sounds in the backyard sometimes. I know it's not really fair to talk about the backyard noise when you can't hear it, but sometimes it is the most striking thing about being outside. It can be really, really loud. And there is one sound that I hear on a regular basis, nearly always coming from a particular clump of trees in the backyard, that I am completely unable to identify the source of. It is a weird, trilling sound, and though I have been hearing it for year, I don't know if it comes from a bird, a squirrel, a bug or a tree frog. I don't think it's a bird or a squirrel, because I have sometimes stood, and watched, and waited when hearing the sound, and have not spotted a bird or squirrel. Either of those would eventually move so that I could see them. My best guess, which is a totally uneducated one, is frog. It is one of the enduring mysteries of the backyard.

I am listening to the night noises of the backyard while I write this - for the first time in a while I have the window open so I can hear them and get a fresh breeze. I suggest you do the same, or better yet, go outside and listen.

Today I felt relieved and oddly thrilled when I found a Backyard Bug of the Day rather quickly upon going out to look. That has not been the case in recent days, and I found myself smiling at the tiny bug that meant anything else I found on my walk was extra.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I don't know what it is, but it appears to be immature, because it looks like its wings are still developing. I wonder what color it will be when it grows up. And how big it will be, because at the moment it is tiny - only a couple of millimeters long.

Backyard Bud of the Day:

No idea.

I came upon an interesting interaction today for Backyard Bug Behavior:

I did see the beginning of this interaction, but I didn't get pictures of it, so I will just have to tell you how it started. A buffalo treehopper landed on a goldenrod on which an assassin bug was already sitting, landing right in front of the assassin bug. The assassin bug grabbed the buffalo treehopper, but after a couple of seconds the treehopper wrenched free and flew away... about three inches, onto a leaf of the same plant. It walked around there for a few seconds and the flew again, landing on the same spike of goldenrod flowers, but this time behind the assassin bug, instead of in front of it.

 Here is the buffalo treehopper on the other side of the plant, behind the assassin bug.

 It's hard to see in this picture, but the assassin bug obviously was aware of the landing, because it turned around. (Note also that the buffalo treehopper is looking kind of scruffy).

 The treehopper seemed oblivious to the presence of the assassin, but the assassin began to creep up on the treehopper.

 Reaching out...

The assassin bug touched the treehopper with its antennae... and the treehopper flew away, unscathed. Two brushes with death within a minute.

More Backyard Bug Behavior:

 This story is more congenial. I think these two earwigs are courting. I just googled it, and it's complicated, but if they are courting, they will stay together until late winter or spring.

 When you're an earwig, your hugs are kind of awkward.

 My guess would be that the one with the large pincers is the male.

I am still squicked out by earwigs, but I have to admit this is a pretty handsome bug.

They make a cute couple.

Many Random Bugs today:

 Tree cricket, in a tree. This one is immature, it doesn't have wings yet.

 I took this picture of a cranefly just for the shadow.

 I took this one for the iridescence of the wings. With the camera adjusted better for the low light it wasn't as pretty, so this is what you get.

 If you look carefully you can spot a couple of bugs in this picture. There are some things that it is just impossible to show in a photograph, and one of them is the magical feeling of the afternoon light glowing on the forms of flitting insects. I am sure this is why people believe in fairies.

 Caterpillar...

My favorite kind of cocoon.

 The first of several wings I found today. I think it is a discarded wing from an ant queen.

In an abridged version, when a young ant queen sets of to start a new colony, she leaves the nest where she was born and flies out to mate with males of other nests. After mating the males die, but the queen lands, takes off her wings, and goes off to start a new colony by laying her now-fertilized eggs. Around this time of the summer I start to find random wings lying around, and I think that's what they are. It's hard to see them in this picture, but there are three wings on the leaf next to this ant: two larger wings, and one small (I am guessing there was another small one that got blown away by the wind. They are very light). I think this is a queen who has mated, and has just discarded her wings. She crawled away rather quickly after I showed up with my camera.

 Moth in the wild.

An adorable wasp.

 See the wasp waist?

 The rare and pleasant sight of a butterfly.

 Some sort of hairstreak.

Today there's a theme among the spiders - they are all tiny. Whether that makes them less intimidating to the arachnid averse, I leave that to them to decide. However, while all of the pictured spiders are small, I have zoomed in a couple of the pictures, so they don't appear so. Arachnid Appreciation:
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I went out today in search of the two small spiders from yesterday. I did not find the first web where it had been, but this one was in the same place I saw it yesterday. This time it had at least a partial line leading to the center, and I got a better shot at the spider.

Here is the same picture, zoomed in quite a lot. It's an interestingly shaped spider. I think this one is new for me.

 Dorsal view.

 When it got tired of me being so close to its web it retreated to this branch, where one of the web threads is attached.

 Quite an interesting little spider. As always, I wonder if this spider is young, and will grow larger, or is just a tiny species.

 I wonder that about all of these. So many tiny spiders around today...