Yesterday evening, while my wife was picking raspberries, I was looking for bugs and spiders. And I found a few, too. The first to catch my eye was a Yellow Douglas Fir Borer (Centrodera spurca). This guy was just hanging out on a raspberry leaf and didn't seem to mind a close-up photo.

My wife found some bugs (true bugs, that is) in her raspberry bowl. A green stink bug, that looks to me like it belongs in the genus Chlorochroa; and a small (~ 4 mm) brown bug, that the best I can do is say it is in the Hemiptera order. It may even be a Chlorochroa nymph for all I know.

But the coolest thing we found in the raspberry patch was a yellow crab spider. It's bright yellow color made poor camouflage on the red raspberry. I wanted to call it the Goldenrod Crab Spider (Misumena vatia ), but I couldn't see any red stripes on the outside of the abdomen. So I left it at family Thomisidae.

A bit earlier in the afternoon, I found a bald-faced hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) busily chewing up some wood on a carved walking stick. I suppose she was using the wood fiber to make a nest, which is probably in my backyard somewhere. I hope I don't find it the hard way.

Posted on July 8, 2016 03:40 AM by swells