Dandy

I use this blog to advocate for bugs, and I have a live-and-let-live policy toward most bugs, and for the most part have the philosophy that there aren't good bugs and bad bugs, they all have their place in the world, even the ones we don't like (except all ticks are evil. But they are arachnids, not insects, and strictly speaking, bugs are only a particular order of insects, but now is not the time to go over all that), but... wow, this is an insane, run-on sentence, I have forgotten where it's going. Ah, this - Bugs all have their place, but when a bug is in the wrong place, when it is an invasive species, it can be a bad bug for that place. For that reason I don't like to choose invasive species that are destructive as Backyard Bug of the Day. That gave me a bit of a dilemma for today, because I found a bug that is new to me, and wanted to make it Backyard Bug of the Day, except it looked a little bit like a bug I have seen notices about as a harmful invasive species, of the sort that the DEEP actually warns you how to deal with if you find one, and that they want you to report sightings of. So I tried looking up this mysterious bug in my bug books, and didn't find it - it is a beetle, and there are about 400,000 species of beetle in the world, so obviously they are not all going to make it into my books. Which is to say, I didn't find it. Next I tried looking up invasive insect species in Connecticut, to see if I could find it there, and I did find an insect that looks like it, except for some very key features. The invasive beetle is a longhorn beetle, with very long antennae. The beetle that I found has very short antennae. Therefore, not the invasive one. So, still not knowing what it is, I am making it today's Backyard Bug of the Day.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 It's some sort of beetle. That's all I know, since it was not in my books.

The beetle was not the only insect enamored of the dandelions today. The other day there were three dandelions in the entire yard, but today there are suddenly dandelions all over, and most of them had visitors, two, and often three to a flower:

 Mostly bees, but if you look closely, there's another little critter there, too.

 Another flower, same story...

 The third bug has showed up here. Bees are not the only pollinators.

 This bee goes for a little more variety - some dandelion nectar...

 ... and some bluet nectar.

I think this is a little beetle. I thought at first that it had yellow spots, but then I realized it's just covered in pollen.

 But the dandelions were not the only flowers to attract bees. Here's one resting on a daffodil.

 And of course, one in the rock garden on the creeping myrtle. There were a lot of bees there today, as usual, but this is the only one that sat to have its picture taken.

There were lots of other insects in the rock garden, including:

 A tiny beetle on the leaf litter in the rock garden.

And this is something I saw a couple of times in the rock garden today. Remember the other day I posted a couple of pictures of ants carrying sow bugs?

 Today they were carrying caterpillars. This one's caterpillar was dead, and looked like it was dried up.

 I think this ant's caterpillar was still alive.

 I saw a third one, too (with a dead caterpillar), but didn't get a picture of it. I wonder what the source was of all these caterpillars, living and dead?

I didn't take a picture today, but there were spring azure butterflies in the rock garden and elsewhere in the backyard today. I saw a veritable parade of them flit by as I had my lunch in the arbor. Well, parade is probably overstating things quite a bit. But there were several of them that went by in succession. I also saw two other species of butterflies today, but I didn't get a close enough look at them to know what they were, except that they both looked like things I have not seen before - and obviously I didn't get pictures of them. Neither one of them even landed. So that makes 5 species of butterflies in the backyard in the last week.

There were very few bugs to be seen today in places other than the rock garden or on dandelions. In fact, I only got pictures of one:

Cranefly on the side of the house.

As for Arachnid Appreciation:
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That comes from the rock garden, too:

 

 I didn't see the spider, but here's a little spiderweb among the vines and leaf litter.

 And another of those brown jumping spiders, although this one doesn't look as plain as the one from the other day.