a few more photos. i noticed the white splotches on my redbud (i almost typed redbug) tree. i thought they were one of the scale insects, but a few days later i noticed a funny-looking thorn on the branch very near the "scale". the thorn is a kind of treehopper. this one is called two-mark, guess why? when i was looking up the thorn, i learned that the white splotches are the EGGS of the treehopper.
Click on any picture to enlarge it. Click again to REALLY enlarge it.
A couple of days ago i saw this skipper, but i was so hot to shoot the various bees and flies that i forgot to take its picture. Finally I got another chance.
this afternoon i was brushing off a coneflower, and something very tiny moved a bit. Zoom in a couple of times to see the tiny spider. So far I don't know what it is.
Lastest but not leastest, here is a so-called dinner-plate hibiscus, with an anonymous albion friend for size comparison.
That same hibiscus (where the candy-striped leafhoppers like to stay) is also host to the two-horned treehopper.
September 21, 2014
Hi everyone! I received my new $78 buck camera - it has twice the megapixels of the older one - 20! I suppose if I can get my tripod taped together - I got it with an older camera I got in ecuador when my earlier one was pickpocketed - and not shake the camera so much i can get pictures worth printing. It does have an option to reduce the focus area so it is less likely to focus on the ground instead of the tiny buglet.
Here is a newer picture of a hoverfly - probably the clearest one so far.
Here is another from last year of a buckeye butterfly. I had never seen one since my childhood in Virginia and there rarely. This one spent the whole afternoon posing for me on - you guessed it - aster.
Those asters are such faithful friends. They last into the fall (oh - is it time to say happy equinox?) and attract more butterflies and bees than anything else at this time. The hover flies seem especially fascinated with the bright pink ones.
A couple of nights ago, just at the last light, I found a pretty green critter in an aster. oh no! guess who else was in the picture. Another one of those crab spiders - and it had the (I think either dead or paralyzed) bee in its grasp. As I chased it around it carried the great green fly to get out of my sight. Luckily there was a patch of light - I actually picked the flower and put it onto another plant in the light. Took the picture and took the spider back to the mother ship (the aster plant) and let it get back onto a new flower. Beautiful violence. Sigh...
One more. Another green sweat bee - I focused in somewhere - can't see the image in the camera view finder too well. Result: the bee's eye is emphasized. It looks as if he is giving us the old hairy eyeball. Don't mess with him... totally harmless but what a look in his face...
Love, happy equinox from Martha
Bugguide.net is a wonderful resource. If you find a picture of something unknown to you, I'd love to see it , but also try your hand at identifying it at Bugguide.net:
 5 plus white eggs.jpg)
