Things are happening in my life right now that just aren't compatible with bug-hunting, or bug blogging. I expect these conditions and other pending predicaments to be in effect for the next couple of weeks or so.
Even so, as I was leaving the hospital today after visiting my mom, my eyes strayed to a small beetle resting on the parking structure stairway handrail. It's in my blood, you see. I will always come back to the bugs.
Warning: Porno
Uh, sort of.
It's GREEN PORNO.
"Isabella Rossellini brings us a bizarre and hilarious look at sex in the natural world in this series of all new shorts."
There are 8 different bug sex scenarios, including a praying mantis, in which Rossellini plays the male.
From the Sundance Channel. Click here to view online.
The videos played rather choppy on my computer at first, but in replaying were normal.
Just a little clip I found on YouTube showing a white lined sphinx moth flying and feeding. You can see why it's called a Hummingbird Moth.
It's just getting dark here now, and I figured since we had so many moths last night, I might see some on our honeysuckle plants. I was not disappointed. Unfortunately, I don't think I could take a video in the fast fading light. Thank goodness for YouTube.
Remember the other week, when I saw 3 sphinx moths on my porch, and thought it was special?
Well, Michael came home from Jessi's house late last night after I was already in bed, and he had to wake me up to ask, "Guess how many sphinx moths are on the porch?!"
"Three?" I guessed, supposing history might be repeating itself.
"Six!" he corrected.
I think I started to go back to sleep, but then he came back to my bedroom door and said, "Aren't you going to come and see them?"
Well, Michael doesn't often become enthused about bug stuff, so I hauled myself out of bed and let him point out all the moths. Squinting beneath the porch light, we counted not six, but seven. This was apparently interesting enough for even the reclusive Brice to come and have a look. It was nice. The boys were laughing and cussing good naturedly as the big moths flew around our heads, and I found a black widow spider on our front door and slapped it with a nearby garden clog.
Eventually we went back inside, and I went back to bed. Jerry managed to sleep through the whole thing.
I didn't take pictures at the time, because the moths were flying around quite a bit, and there's no way I could have gotten all 7 in one shot, but here's one representative who was still on the porch this morning.
The blistering hot weather we had over the weekend seemed to bring out lots of bugs in the evening. I saw a couple of new things that were attracted to the porch light.
This bright little banded cucumber never stopped moving, but I got one good shot.
I really liked this snazzy little bug. I don't remember seeing one like it before. After much searching on BugGuide, I think it's Closterocoris amoenus.
This bug looks similar, but not quite as distinctly patterned as the one above. I wonder if it might be the opposite sex of the first one, or maybe there is some variation within the species.
And here, this afternoon, I saw another one on one of my mini-roses.
from our trip to Joshua Tree
A small moth on the window ledge of the Adobe
Nice bee shot
Just another day at the office for the ants. I was hoping with all the ants, I'd see a horned lizard or 2. No such luck.
Sweet little dove nest in a palm tree
Milkweed bugs
OK, I think that's all the photos of bugs and critters from our trip to Joshua Tree.
There were a couple of things I couldn't identify. Well, I guess I should say, I haven't really tried to identify them yet. But at this point, I really don't know what they are.
At the Joshua Tree visitor center, on some plants at the beginning of a little trail near the building, there were lots of these fluffy things. Galls? Egg cases? My brain wanted them to be praying mantis egg cases, but there were too many of them all over the plants, and the sizes too varied, from pea-sized to walnut-sized. 
Some of them had what appeared to be exoskeletons of tiny insects. Could they have been a parasitic wasp of some kind? 
Then there were these mysterious floating eggs in the pond at Barker Dam. 
I fished them out for a closer look, but it didn't help. It looks like each enlongated yellow egg has a bunch of tiny round eggs inside. All were suspended in a glear gelatinous fluid, similar to frog eggs.
So I guess I should try to find out what these are sometime.
Yes, apparently they do.
I found out by accident that my aged ET stickbug likes cheeseweed, a common weed around these parts. I wish I would have found this out sooner. The weeds are past their prime now, and withering in the heat. (90's today)
It might be a little hard to figure out this picture, so I'll explain. This is the egg case I collected from this post. The green stuff is beeswax that I used to attach it to the branch of a plant in my yard. You can see a white cluster of natal skins hanging just to the right of center. This was not a complete hatch-out, but a group. And you can just make out part of the group under the horizontal leaf near the bottom of the picture.
You can click on the picture to enlarge it, but my favorite is really the second picture...
This is the first and last time these babies will be together. They appear to be peering out at the world, (and me) from under the safety of the leaf, maybe deciding amongst themselves who will go first, and what they might do.
