May Day

 It's May, and the Canada mayflowers are blooming:

 I wasn't going to do a bug walk today, because I didn't feel like being productive, or at least didn't feel like making an effort and being disappointed, as so often happens. It was still kind of windy, and a cursory look around didn't show me much other than a few flies. But I did anyway, and now I have almost 400 pictures to sort through for this post... [later... and now that I have, you're only going to see pictures of maybe half of the bugs I took pictures of, because a lot of them are not any good].

 Backyard Bird of the Day:

Can you spot the eye of this mourning dove on its nest?

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Spring azure butterfly on garlic mustard flowers

It gave me a tiny glimpse of the azure color on the dorsal side of its wings.

Other Bugs:

Bumblebee on creeping myrtle. For some reason the carpenter bee was not patrolling the rock garden today, so other bees like this bumblebee were free to feed on the flowers without being chased away.

Click beetle. You can't really tell from this picture, but it blended in really well between these leaf buds on an oak tree.

This wasp is so tiny I thought it was a gnat.

 

Winter firefly

Beetle

Ant on sassafras flowers

Beetle

The crab apple tree is in full bloom. I am surprised at how few bees are being attracted to it–in the past I could stand under it and hear a symphony of buzzing when the tree is all aflower, but the last couple of days I could only spot a few bees.

There are two bees here.

Beetle:

Stinkbug

I am not really sure if this is a bee or a fly. I think bee. On dandelion

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Jumping spider:

 

As I was taking pictures of a mite that was hurrying along a tree trunk, I happened to spot something else lurking nearby. Can you see the spider?

Also a snow flea; I saw a few of those on the trunks today.

As usual, it's a snake for Backyard Reptile of the Day:

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Also as usual, I found it by almost stepping on it and then seeing it when it darted away. It didn't go far, though, and was extremely compliant about letting me take photos.

Garter snake. When I see a snake and it looks like this one I have to be sure to get a decent shot of the head so that I can look at it and see if it's a garter snake or a ribbon snake. The black lines on the labial scales and the lack of a white dot in front of the eye indicate a garter snake.

Keeled scales. Sometimes when you look up how to identify species of snakes it will say if they have keeled scales or non-keeled scales (smooth scales). If you look at these scales you will see that the have a ridge down the middle like the keel of a boat.

Injured tail. I swear, I didn't do it. Even if I was the kind of person who would attack an animal out of nastiness, knowing that the vast majority of snake bites occur when someone is trying to kill a snake would keep me from attacking it. Garter snakes, of course, are not venomous, but you can get a nasty infection from the bite of a non-venomous snake.