Persistence

There was no blog post yesterday because I was gone all day, from just after the sun came up until just before midnight. I turned on the porch light before I left, and thought maybe there'd be something on the porch when I got back, but no such luck. The forecast called for a rainy day, which I was going to use as my excuse, but based on the amount of rain in the gauge this morning I know it didn't rain all day. So, sorry, but I was far away from my backyard yesterday, and therefore couldn't see any bugs.

Today was a bit rainy, too (and cold. Colder than normal, and colder than the forecast said it would be, which is annoying), but not so rainy that I couldn't go outside to find some bugs. I had a hard time finding anything but spiders at first (it turns out most of the bugs today were on the same side of the backyard - the opposite side of where all the spiders were. Hmm...), so when I saw this...

... the blue winged warbler, which eats bugs, flitting around the crab apple tree, obviously finding things to eat, I was jealous and annoyed that it could find bugs and I couldn't. On the other hand, it very literally supports its life with its bug-finding abilities, and I am only an amateur (without wings), so to be fair, it makes sense that it would be so much more skilled than I am. Also, it had access to an area that I did not.

I took over 400 pictures in the backyard today. 401, to be exact. Over 200 of those were of the Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Why did I take over 200 pictures of this insect? Well, it wouldn't cooperate, and it was cool enough that I was willing to make the effort. It was quite a beautiful color (which doesn't show well in this picture, but you will see shortly).

 A weevil. I tried to look it up in Kaufman's Field Guide to Insects of North America, and there I found out that there are over 3,000 species of weevils in North America, and of the 30 or so pictured in the book, 2 of them look a lot like this. So, it could be Polydrusus impressifrons, or it could be a Lesser Clover Weevil, or it could be one of the 2,900+ species that are not in that book.

 I first found it on my shoulder. That is a place where you cannot even really tell what kind of bug you are seeing, much less take a good picture of it, so I transferred it to a tree, then to a twig, then it fell on this leaf, then I moved the leaf to a rock, and eventually the weevil just crawled onto the rock. I felt no compunction about moving the weevil to a better place to take pictures because after all, I found it on my shoulder. I had to move it anyway. By the way, I have tried to explain to the bugs in the backyard that if they land on me they are obligated to pose for me, but almost none of them hold up their end of that contract. Anyway, this picture shows the weevil just after it fell onto the leaf. Weevils are very keen on that defense mechanism whereby they play dead and drop to the ground, and I guess that is what this one was trying to do (though why it felt so threatened that it felt the need to do that, I don't know. In addition to being found on my shoulder, the whole time it was on the twig and I was trying to take its picture, all it wanted to do was crawl onto my hand. So obviously it was not afraid of me), but interestingly, it opened its wings out when it landed. I have never seen a weevil do that before. For years I didn't even know they had wings. I think I have only once seen one fly (this one never did).

 At this point it was using its front left leg to groom its middle left leg. This went on for a while.

 Isn't that color incredible?

 

 It flexed its elytra and out came the wings a bit.

 This one was left hanging out for a while. I would really love to know how insect wings work, the ones that fold up under elytra, specifically. How to the fold them and unfold them? It fascinates me.

And speaking of insects whose folding wings fascinate me:

 Tiny rove beetle (I almost wrote beatle again). I love rove beetles because their elytra are really short - you can see them open above the wings here. They don't cover the whole back of the beetle, like with most beetles, they just cover a small part of it, but the wings fold up underneath them anyway. And they are not tiny wings, they are about what you'd expect for a bug that size. Also, when they close their wings up underneath the elytra, the push them into place by lifting up the end of their abdomen. It is really cute to watch, and often when I see a rove beetle, it will do this several times - flex out the wings, put them back, flex out the wings, put them back... This one just flew away. Sometimes they do that, too.

As for the rest of the bugs...

 This might be a kind of soldier fly.

 Gnat. Actually, I am not 100% clear on what are and are not gnats. It might not even be an official designation, and is just a name given to a lot of not-necessarily-related small flies, from some things I have read. Anyway, tiny insect.

 Stonefly

 I don't know what this is (gnat?) but it looks like it was designed by Dr. Seuss.

Ants. The most fascinating thing about this picture is the lower left...

And, from the other side of the backyard, Arachnid Appreciation:
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 This is possibly the tiniest spider I have ever seen. It is so tiny that I couldn't find it without the camera lens. So, how did I spot it in the first place?

 I was taking a picture of this gnat (and in none of the pictures was the gnat in focus, which is why I didn't post them above), and there was a bit of a confrontation between the gnat and something else that zoomed into view. I followed the something else and found out that it was this spider. To see how small it is, you can compare it to the size of the gnat - it is in this picture. Look at the top of the picture, near the center.

Meanwhile, on another nearby tree...

 Hiding under its legs.

 I almost always see this kind of spider on its web, so it's hard to get a side view of it, but this one was on a tree, so here you go.

And on another nearby tree...

 I don't know what kind of spider this is, but it should be called a mustard seed spider, because its abdomen is about the size of a mustard seed, and, well, that color...

This one was actually on the other side of the yard. Rebel.

 I wish there was some way I could keep track of this spider for the whole summer and see how big it will get, and what it will look like when it does.