These daisies were part of the rich community of invasive plants[1] growing over our septic tank drain field on June 29, 2016
They are clearly disturbed-soil colonizers, they’ve largely taken over large expanses of ground.
This moth from July 10, 2016 is pretty well camouflaged. It would be even better if it were on actual bark, and not on a dead log that the bark had sloughed off of.
The reddish-brown forewings with the white band along the trailing edge is unusual enough that I think the best match is the adult moth of the Yellow-Headed Cutworm, Apamea amputatrix
These flowers that I found growing beside the road on July 19, 2016, are another type[1] of fleabane:
They resemble daisies, but the white petals on the ray florets are still more numerous and thinner than what you would see on a daisy.
Here are two moths from June, 2016. The first one is a new species for this site, that was at our porch light on June 25.
When I was taking the pictures, I thought it was going to be a repeat (specifically, I thought it was a Hickory Tussock Moth like the one I photographed back in 2007), but while the color was close, the pattern was wrong. And on closer examination of the head/thorax, it didn’t really look furry enough on the shoulders to be a tiger moth.
We have little purple flowers blooming at random places all over our yard, like this one from July 1, 2016. They start blooming in the spring, and we see them all the way through to September.
The blossoms are pretty, but very tiny, as you can see by comparing this one to my fingertips:
This moth was at our porch light on June 30, 2016, and I managed to get it onto my finger for photographs. Judging from how it compares with my finger, the wingspan is a bit over an inch.
Its face is pretty typical for a moth.
These were blooming over our septic tank drain field on July 1, 2016. The plants stand about knee-height.
The most distinctive thing about them is their flowers, which have a prominent “pouch” that the petals stick out of.
These are two different specimens of what I think are almost certainly the same species, one from June 25, 2016 and the other from July 9, 2016. If it weren’t for the date stamps on the photos, I’m not sure I’d be able to tell which one was which. Well, that and the fact that the one from July is missing a leg.
One of the most striking features of the most common insects is the really remarkable changes that happen when the larva forms a pupa that completely restructures itself into the adult. The metamorphosis is often so radical that there is no obvious similarity between the larva and the adult at all.
Not all insects do this. The silverfish, true bugs, mantids, cockroaches, dragonflies, damselflies, mayflies, stoneflies, lice, and a bunch of other mostly-obscure groups develop directly from nymphs to adults, with no pupa stage. The young just become more similar to the adults with every molt until they finally mature (by developing genitalia, and usually also by growing wings).
Some of the most common moths coming to our porch light on June 25-30, 2016 were a variety of small moth species that were clearly in the family Geometridae. They all had the same general pose and wing shape, but radically different colors. Some were almost white:
