Puddle Jumpers

My bug walk today was about the only place I didn't see any bugs.

Meanwhile, the porch light attracted today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Ichneumon wasp

It rained a little bit last night, and when I went out to get the mail in the morning there was a small puddle on one of the stone steps, the one just below where the snow fleas like to hang out. And there, on the surface of the puddle:

 A small raft of snow fleas. And not just fully grown snow fleas. Can you see the tiny snow flea nymphs?

 They climb all over each other. I don't know why.

 Nymph

 

 Nymph catching a ride on the back of one of the adults.

   Snow fleas, as you know if you read this blog, are a species of springtail, and there was another species of springtail on the puddle:

There are two here, one right in the middle of the picture, and...

... a tiny nymph almost too small to see. They are both nymphs, though.

 There were plenty of snow fleas on the rock next to the puddle, too. By the time I went out to do my bug walk about an hour later, the puddle had dried up, and the snow fleas had mostly dispersed.

Then I didn't find many other bugs on my bug walk, as I mentioned:

 Ant carrying the remains of another insect (or possibly spider)

It was very warm and sunny, so I expected to see a lot of candy striped leaf hoppers, but there weren't very many:

 

 Most of them were right here.

I saw more spiders than I was able to photograph, most of them darting among the leaf litter on the ground. But there were a couple of jumping spiders on the side of the house that agreed to pose for Arachnid Appreciation:
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