I have decided to restrict this and next week to documenting what i see on goldenrod. it is fast going passe but still contains a goodly number of species that seem to really like the goldenrod habitat. so far i've seen at least 27 species and life stages. for instance, on one of the really gone-by plants, there were quite a few little red, black and grey bugs (hemiptera), which i was able to find on bugguide - they are called twice-stabbed stink bugs. but near them was what i thought at first was a kind of ladybug but later realized was a bug nymph (immature form). in fact eventually i found this critter labeled as the nymph of the twice-stabbed. look how different they look! if the little one were a ladybug you should be able to see the longitudinal line that marks where the two hard wings meet - but this thing has no such line. that rules out any beetle. ;-) the one place where they resemble each other is the wavy curve separating the darkly-colored section of each from the end of the abdomen.
Click on any picture to enlarge it. Click again to REALLY enlarge it.
Another thing i found out is that the asian lady bugs (we don't like them much because (1) they give off a stink-bug-like odor that you can smell from several feet away and (2) they BITE). Bad because they seem to line up on your bedroom ceiling . oh damn. just writing that made me look up from where i'm sitting with the computer - there's something!. Ah- it flew off - so it's not a spider. Gone now. Whew. Must have been some kind of fly. Anyway they like to drop off the ceiling so don't snore with your mouth open. But i digress - what i found out is that one of the genders is the same tannish color but the spots aren't evident.
i took to spending half my looking time here and half at the nature center, where there is still one easy to see section with a bit of yellow bloom left on it. there i saw this black and yellow beetle, the locust borer (i didn't even know locusts got bored) and a bunch of other things, the most exciting of which was this new (for me) kind of hoverfly as well as this one which i'm sure you remember from a while ago but it seems to be quite a bit smaller than the earlier brood and this one which you've all seen before (this shot is dark because the fly lit on a shaded leaf down close to the ground and i didn't have time to change the setting.).
i took to spending half my looking time here and half at the nature center, where there is still one easy to see section with a bit of yellow bloom left on it. there i saw this black and yellow beetle, the locust borer (i didn't even know locusts got bored) and a bunch of other things, the most exciting of which was this new (for me) kind of hoverfly as well as this one which i'm sure you remember from a while ago but it seems to be quite a bit smaller than the earlier brood and this one which you've all seen before (this shot is dark because the fly lit on a shaded leaf down close to the ground and i didn't have time to change the setting.). 
 3a.jpg)
