Yesterday we went to my parents' house. While Jerry was busy working on my dad's computer, I busied myself looking for bugs in the back yard, and I was pleasantly surprised by how many I found. The whole time I lived there as a kid, there was a serious dearth of interesting bugs (although as a teenager, I don't think I focused on bugs a whole lot anyway...)


This mud dauber wasp, Sceliphron caementarium, was resting on a fake plant. There were a couple other wasps and yellow-jackety looking things, but none that would pose as nicely as this one.


This is a no big deal blue green sharpshooter, but it's a nice clear picture. I keep trying to improve upon previous photos, and these little buggers are notoriously hard to take pictures of, because they're tiny, and when they see you looking at them, they hide on the other side of the leaf.


Here's another little hopper, Sophonia orientalis, a non-native species from Taiwan. I think they look like tiny surfboards. And those black "eyes" are actually spots on the rear of the wings.

I saw not one, but two katydid species. This is a scudder's katydid nymph.

I also found a freshly moulted P. nana. I never saw these in my yard when I was a kid. Of course, that was a million years ago.

There were several spiders, including some cute little jumping spiders, but not one of them would cooperate in having their pictures taken.

These curly little cycad leaves didn't mind, though.