Bugs of the Day

One of our more impressive local bugs, this huge pine borer was brought to me this morning in a drinking glass inside a milk crate.  They can bite, but they don't move very fast, so it was relatively easy for me to pick it up by its sides with my left hand and get lots of photos with my right hand.  I'll probably post some more later, including one of a proud little girl handling it.  On the way into camp, I saw some sort of moving grey blobs on a leaf of Mule's Ears.  Low lighting, so I didn't get a ve ry good photo on the leaf.  I then shook a few off on my hand and went out into bright sun for the next photo.  Very tiny, maybe 1/8" long, and I don't have a macro lens.  This time, however, the photos were sharp enough for me to identify them as Lace Bugs, in a family of the True Bugs, known by entomologists as the Order Hemiptera.  Click on any of these photos for close-up views. 
In my next post, I'll have a few more photos and an explanation of the difference between a "true bug" and any other sort of bug that is not a true bug, except when it is.  It's sort of like deciding whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable.