Goochie Goo

Baby animals seem to be emblematic of springtime - lambs, chicks... baby bugs?

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think this is a hopper nymph, so, a baby hopper.

 Aw, cute, little baby!

And...

 ... another baby hopper. I know it is hard to get a sense of scale in my pictures, but if you've ever looked at a dandelion, and know roughly the size of the petals, you'll get a sense of how small this is.

Here's the same picture, zoomed in.

And on a nearby blade of grass...

 ... another baby hopper.

Zoomed in. In both of these cases the bugs hopped away before I could get a closer picture. But the Backyard Bug of the Day was as close as I could get with the camera.

Meanwhile, on the sappy stump...

 I spotted this tiny fly.

 It was marching around, signaling with its wings.

Then on the other side of the backyard...

 I found another one, doing the same thing on a dead branch. I am 99% sure I saw this exact same kind of bug, doing this same wing-waving thing, on this same dead branch last year. My guess is that the wing-waving thing has to do with either attracting a mate or claiming territory, but I don't really know.

One of the flowering crab apple trees is in full bloom, and attracting a lot of bugs. This year most of the flowers are up too high for me to get a close-up of them, but it was interesting to see the swarm of insects flying around the top of the tree. Wanting to give a sense of how this looks, I decided to take some pictures. Naturally the second I pointed the camera up, most of the insects disappeared. But here are a few shots anyway. Try to find the bees (or flies, mostly you can't tell from that difference, especially in a still shot where you can't see how they fly):

 The bumblebees are pretty easy to spot.

 Remember we were recently discussing (and I use the term discussing in a totally incorrect sense) that ants can carry much more than their own weight?

 I don't think you're going to be able to pick this one up, ant.

Spotted this insect on a leaf bud, and got a few pictures, but I got too close and it dropped to the grass.

 Then it sat there like this for a while.

Fly away!

A few porch light visitors - three different moth species. Those are the handles of our snow shovels - it's probably safe to put those away now...

Arachnid Appreciation:
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In my years of taking macrophotographs of bugs I have learned a few things, and one of the things I have learned is when it is pointless to try to take a picture, because the bug is not going to cooperate. This mite was running at quite a clip along this tree trunk, so I knew that a close-up shot would never work, so here's a long shot, showing at least the bright red color.