A white-marked tussock caterpillar. Insects seem to come in threes. This guy was hiding under the railing of our porch, inches away from the group below.
The red part is it's back. I originally thought the red part was its face. I'm hoping it was making a cocoon in the crevice. I'll take photos if it was!
This a group of wheel bugs. Wheel bugs are a type of assasin beetle. They grab their prey and hold it with it's front legs and stab it with their beak. Their bites can hurt really bad and take a long time to heal.
When wheel bugs mate, as I can only assume they are, the female will usually eat the male. I'm not sure which one(s) are the males and females. I wonder who is gonna get eaten?
The red patches on the back are scent organs, much like a stink bug. The smell was not as bad a stink bug though. We're infested with them at work, so I know that smell very well.
These aphids are all over a tree that overhangs the porch where the wheel bugs were banging and the caterpillar was hiding.
Wheelbugs eat aphids, so I think they may have been attracted to the porch because of the mass of aphids nearby.
On the ground below the aphids; flies, ants and bees were swarming. I think they were attracted to the sap excreted by the aphids.
When I took this picture, an aphid fell in my eye and some of their excretion got on my face. It smelled like pine trees and honey.
I smelled it before I knew it was aphid pee. The aphid in my eye hurt really bad, I had to stumble back onto the porch and get my mom to get it out. I felt like a little kid again.
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