Mental Help

I had a pretty crummy day, and was really frustrated when I went outside to do my bug walk. But it was warm today, and the sun came out. The birds were singing, the flowers were blooming, the trees are finally starting to show some leaves, a jumping spider jumped on my shoulder and danced around a bit before jumping off, and all of that together made everything better. After I did my bug walk we went for our daily tromp through the woods, and we saw a snake, our first in the woods, and two frogs, also our first sightings in the woods (though we hear them, we never saw on there before today). Due to all of the rain this week the water level was high in the streams, so the tiny waterfalls were gushing. Everything was lovely, and as we headed back toward the house, the sun shining through the developing green leaves high in the canopy was such a joy to see. I read a lot of things that say that spending time in nature is good for your mental health, and on days like today I can really feel the truth of that. None of the problems of earlier in the day were fixed, but in the evening I was in a better mood anyway, because I spent time outside seeing the glory of springtime.

 A tree in the woods, starting to leaf out

 Wildflowers growing by a stream. It was harder than I expected to look these up, and I haven't figured out what they are yet. [Edit: I couldn't find this in my flower field guide, which has terrible pictures, but my friend Karen found out it is called dwarf ginseng.]

 Maple leaves

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

 One of the two frogs we saw in the woods. This is a new species for me.

 It was sitting on a rock next to a stream.

 I crossed to the other side of the stream to get this shot; it jumped in the water just after I took it. I kind of thought that frogs didn't live in running water, but both of the ones I saw in the woods today jumped into the stream.

A couple of days ago I posted a picture of a tree that is gushing sap, which has caused fungus to grow on the tree. At the time there were quite a lot of flies attracted to the sap (I think. They could have been after the fungus), but today there were only a few flies, and instead there were three different species of fungus beetles, which are now Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 There were a lot of these. They are quite small, but I could see them up and down the trunk. There's a fly in this shot, too.

The goopy stuff is the fungus.

And what's that? Another species? Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 

 You can see how wet the trunk is from the sap.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:

Other Bugs:

 Wasp on dandelion

 Beetle

 Rove beetle

 Ants, I think carrying eggs? Whether those are their eggs, or ones they stole, I don't know.

The leafy spurge was popular again:

 Beetle

This particular flower head was particularly popular:

 Hard to see, but there are two species of beetles, two species of ants, and...

 ... a couple of gnats. I was trying to take pictures of this blue beetle, so that's what's in focus.

 This looks like the beetle is being sweet and patting the tiny ant on the head, but it was more aggressive than that.

 I am not sure what this is. It looks sort of like a stilt bug, but not really.

More crabapple flowers are opening every day, attracting bees:

 The difficulty for me is that most of the flowers are way over my head. You can see some bees flying around the tree, though.

Obviously I did not get a picture of the jumping spider that danced on my shoulder, but I did find a fe other spiders for Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I got a package yesterday that was too big for the mailbox, but luckily for the spider that lives in the package bin it was delivered to the front porch, so its web is unscathed.

 Mite