On A Lovely Day

 In the spring, things are constantly changing, developing, progressing...

Like the hazelnut trees:

Look, now both the male and female flowers are blooming! Where is the female flower, you ask? At the very tip of the branch...

I did say they are very small and unobtrusive. There were several blooming today. I hope this means I will have some hazelnuts this year.

I don't know if I mentioned that we are now hearing the spring peepers at night. So I knew that frogs were active now, but I was still surprised to see this on my woods walk:

This is not a spring peeper. Just after this frog scooted into the water to get away from my camera, another one, which I had not seen, but was clearly sitting only a few inches away from this one, plopped in the water behind it.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I think this is a sawfly, which is a type of non-stinging wasp. Sawflies are the ones that have those creepy larvae (there are many species of sawfly, and many different kinds of creepy larvae...).

Other Bugs:

I spotted a winter firefly caught in an eddy in the stream. Fireflies are not aquatic insects; it was able to stay on top of the water because of surface tension, I think, but the water in that little nook was spinning the poor firefly around in circles, and I don't think it knew how to get out. I rescued it with my walking stick.

 

I did not notice at the time, because I wasn't able to get very close to it, but it was not alone; there was a springtail along for the ride. The springtail could easily skate on the surface of the water, but I have seen them sometimes grab onto something else and just get towed around, like it was doing here.

I always say the real law of nature is that if there is something to eat, there will be something to eat it:

There are candy striped leaf hoppers sunning themselves on this tree, and so there is an assassin bug there to take advantage of the bounty.

Ant on hazelnut catkin (male flower). I think this might be a winter ant. Today's high temperature in the 70s would have been hotter than they like, but this picture was taken near dusk, when it had cooled into the 60s, which is more to their taste.

I saw a few other species of bugs, and even photographed some of them, like the wasp that was interested in my lunch, and a rove beetle that was not prey to a spider, but none of those pictures were worth posting. I also saw the first mosquitoes of the year, after considering on my way out whether I needed protection from them and deciding it was too early. Not everything in the spring is a joy.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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The woods were full of spider webs with tiny spiders.

Many of the webs had prey caught in them. This spider was in the process of subduing a rove beetle, which was putting up a fight.