moth

A greenish moth, on a window, seen from underside. Maybe the blackberry looper, I attempted looking up its identity.

bugs

In the sunny sideyard, checking plants for aphids- none on the tithonia or milkweed yet, instead I've been wiping them off the underside of pea leaves. I did find the shadow of a small insect on a milkweed leaf, was about to swipe it off, then looked closer-

It's a monarch caterpillar- first instar! I haven't seen a monarch butterfly in the yard, but one must have visited.

Saw a white something on the gladiolas across the way- which are growing very thick and healthy, btw.

I looked closer-

A small white moth, with tidy black spots. Looked it up- probably the american ermine moth. Which unfortunately can be a minor pest and its caterpillars would probably horrify me- they live commnally in webs (tent caterpillar webs give me the creeps).

My garden is oddly still, this year. There are small flies and wasps, the ubiquitous cabbage moth (I've managed to slap two) and I've seen the dragonfly a few times. No bees. I successfully excluded the carpenter bees from using my decking as homes- there were three that kept coming back (much fewer in numbers than last year!) and I kept squirting water at them (from a distance), plugging the holes they were working on with steel wool and two gave up and left. The last bee was very stubborn but then I plugged its hole-in-progress with wood glue, and it left too.

Now there are no bees. No bees at my flowers, no bees around the borage. I miss them. I just didn't want them gnawing holes in my deck supports- I like them in the garden! I'd hoped they would find old wood elsewhere to chew into- and still visit my plants. And surely I had other bee species, not just carpenter bees? I seem to recall seeing a smaller one, like a mason bee, earlier. They don't come by now. Did my measures against the carpenter bees make them communicate alarm, so the other bees stay away? I guess the other possibility is that my neighbors used something on their lawns that did in the bees. They're not even visiting my clover- and I have a lot of clover blooming front and back right now.

moth on the screen door-

such a curious appearance. It has the usual cryptic mottling to look like tree bark- but what's different from other moths I see is the wings are notched on the rear edge. It held the tail end of abdomen curved up over its back, and looked like the front pair of legs stretched out in front of it- maybe to look like large pincers? It's also darker than most moths I've seen.

Hard to get a photo- my camera didn't want to focus on something so small and dark in the shade of the porch. Tried to look it up. It has similar appearance to many sphinx moths of VA- but I couldn't quite identify.

more bugs

from various days-

Very tiny moth (it's on the bottom trim edge of my aquarium here) with wavy lines in different shades of nut-brown, like it pretends to be tree bark.

Another moth, quite a bit larger- maybe an inch?- caught it for a few minutes and then set outside. Bright coppery hue in some of the pattern, in the light. No idea of their identity. There are so many different brown-and-tan-and-gray moths.

Waiting to become a moth- cocoon of the tufted moth caterpillar we have in a bug house. Smallest one is still there, not moving- third one I don't know where it went. There's a tear in the mesh, perhaps it escaped... This cocoon is on the underside of the plastic lid, so a bit difficult to photograph.

Cicada. I swear they look and sound different than before- I don't remember the bold red/orange eyes from the last generation that emerged, and the raspy noise has a different note, too... I never saw these growing up; when I first moved to the east coast and saw an empty cicada skin on a tree it kind of freaked me out. But my kids think they are cool and slowly I am finding them less unpleasant.

We often find their wings on the ground- they are quite pretty with irridescent sheen.

I am noticing lots of leaf hoppers this year. Blue ones. Vivid green-and-red striped ones. Sneaky gray ones. Very triangular green ones- I think they are imitating a thorn on a stem. And this tiny is like a brown leaf- the veins in wings folded against the body and the notch over the head remind me of a very very small dead leaf.

Insect architecture: somebody was trying to set up housekeeping in a broken light fixture on our deck (now fixed). My husband says this is the nest of a mud-dauber wasp. We found no wasps, I don't think they were using it anymore.

micro

pics of a tiny moth I found in the bathroom

from top view looks like it only has hairs on one edge of its feelers

butterfly?

Found this little guy resting in the lee of a board on my coldframe in the rain. Brought it inside to show Isa. Pretty, bold colors. I think it's a moth- the body is short and fat, the wings relatively small. But don't really know. It fluttered against the door and curtain so hard to get a clear picture not fuzzy but here's the little guy. I really like the geometric pattern on the wings, very striking.

We let him go again outside when the rain stopped.