Busy Day in the Backyard

 Where to start? What to say? I spent a long time outside today, or staring out the window at the outside today, and I spent a lot of time thinking about the wonderfulness of the natural world today, so what do I even say about it?

I love my backyard. I love my woods. I love seeing interesting and beautiful things living and growing. I love learning new things because of what I have seen. 

Today while I was getting to ready to go for my walk in the woods, sitting on the back porch putting on my shoes, I saw my first hummingbird of the year. It zoomed past me and into the woods. It made me smile, sitting there on the back porch by myself. I don't smile much.

Today my backyard was so full of life! The flowering crab apple is flowering, the birds are singing their springtime songs, the bugs are buzzing, the voles are...

... doing whatever voles do. This is the first time I have ever been able to get a picture of a vole, I think. While I was looking out the window at the crab apple tree some movement in my peripheral vision (is it still called peripheral vision if its below, and not to the side? I think so) caught my attention, and I saw this vole sneak under the garden fence. I watched for a few minutes, and eventually it came out again. I didn't get much of a chance to focus, and I was taking this picture at an angle through a dirty window, so this isn't a candidate for the photography show at the art center downtown, but it's exciting for me. I only ever catch quick glimpses of voles. It's probably a bad thing that it's going into the garden, but whatever.

Anyway, about the flowering crab apple... One of the things I have learned in my backyard (and through reading) is that when I see birds enthusiastically darting about in my crab apple tree while it is in bloom, they are not there for the flowers, they are there for the insects. And contrary to my assumption that they are there for the bees, they are there for bugs that I don't see–caterpillars. Caterpillars are what a huge number of songbirds feed to their young, and it takes a huge number of caterpillars to raise a baby bird. What you can't see from the ground is that some species of trees, and apparently my crab apple is one of them, are full of caterpillars in the spring. In other years I have seen warblers in that tree, but last year and this year it has been orioles. In fact, a few days ago there were four or five male Baltimore orioles in there together, and today there were two species of orioles:

Male orchard oriole

It stayed deep in the tree, and it took me a while to get a good enough view of it to know what was in there shaking the branches. I took these pictures from the window upstairs, which gave me a good vantage point, better than looking up into the tree from the ground, but not a very close one.

I think this is a female orchard oriole. Unfortunately she didn't stick around long, and stayed in the shadows, so I never got a good look, or a good shot.

Baltimore oriole, male. This one was taken today.

These were taken a couple of days ago, when there were several male Baltimore orioles in the tree at once:

 Anyway, lots of things out and about today. From the window I saw the birds in the crab apple tree (and there were other species, too, like tufted titmouse, and some others I couldn't see well enough to identify), the vole, chipmunks, a squirrel, some bees, some butterflies, and various species of birds on the ground and in the trees, and in the sky. When I finally decided to go outside to try to get pictures of either birds or bees in the crab apple tree (spoiler: I got neither), I opened the back door and saw:

Taken sideways through the storm door, so it's distorted, sorry. But it was so cute, I couldn't resist. It's a bit unusual for me to see a rabbit at that time of day. Usually I see them more along toward evening. 

I guess now might be a good time to mention that while I was in the woods, it occurred to me that I saw members of two Phylums Phyla, (Chordata and Arthropoda) and 6 Classes (Arachnids, Insects, Mammals, Birds, Amphibians, and Reptiles. I'll bet you can guess what kind of reptile I saw). Except I can never remember the different levels of taxonomy, and the names of them, so I just had to look up phyla and class, and Chordata came up. I was thinking vertebrates (which is what are in the Phylum chordata, meaning things with a spinal chord, or having vertebrae) and invertebrates (no vertebrae). And just so you know, I am probably getting some of this wrong. Anyway, lots of different kinds of living things. So far you've seen birds and mammals, so now for some Arthropods!

Let's begin with Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Eyed click beetle. This is only the second time in my life I have seen one of these. The first time was before I started Backyard Bug of the Day. Before I had a digital camera even. I did take a picture of that first one, which was on my niece's shirt at the time. She was a little kid, and props to her for not freaking out. Anyway, it was cool then, and it's cool now. 

It's also pretty big for a click beetle. A lot of them are only about a quarter of an inch long or so. I was excited to find this today.
 

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Remember all those caddisfly larvae I posted pictures of over the winter? Wait, I may not have actually posted many of them. Well, I saw them when I went on my hikes. And now, there are caddisfly adults in the woods. And this is one of them.

And for another, Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:

Different species. This is one I am pretty sure I have never seen before. It's rare for me to see new species now, after... wait, is this 10 years since I started Backyard Bug of the Day? I think it is! And still finding new species!

I think this calls for a celebration, so... Yay!

I took my camera outside with me when I went to get the mail, and was happy to see that the rock garden is being patrolled by a carpenter bee:

I find carpenter bees amusing.

Ants on sassafras flowers

On the same small tree, an assassin bug nymph that has been in different spots on this tree every day this week. I posted a picture of it in my last post (which, I know, was not a week ago. I am not making this precisely a weekly blog...).

There is a wild cherry tree next to the stone stairs leading up from the street, and as I walked by it and its low branch that encroaches on the stairs a bit, I thought about how it probably annoys me husband, but how I hope he never cuts it because it's a place I find a lot of bugs. And then I found three different species of bugs on it right away:

Some kind of leaf hopper. So small I had to look at it through the camera to know that's what it was.

I think this is a species of soldier beetle. I see them around this time every year.

Another beetle, really small. There were several of these on the tree.

My walk to the mailbox was my only backyard bug walk today; the rest of the bugs I found were in the woods.

I stopped to take a picture of this moth, and it took my husband a few moments to figure out what I was even looking at.

 The caddisfly was not the only insect on the picnic table. There were also a bunch of little beetles (today was a pretty beetly day altogether):

Now for amphibians. The first picture is a sad one:

Once again the small pond has dried up, and the salamander eggs are left high and dry. They haven't completely dried out, but it's not looking so good for the salamanders. BUT! I haven't been down there in three weeks, and it kind of looks like some of the cells/sacs/whatever-they're-called are empty, so maybe the salamanders hatched before it completely dried up? I am still not sure they can survive in their earliest stages without water, but I am going to just hope that it worked out okay for some of them. Otherwise it appears that climate change may be dooming the salamanders in my woods if this is where they lay their eggs. They return to the pool where they hatched to mate and lay eggs, and if nothing is hatching and surviving from this pond, then there won't be any more salamanders from here.

Things are a bit better in the big pond. They were hard to spot, but we saw several frogs:

 There were a couple in the stream, too, a small one that did not stick around for pictures, and, in the part of the stream that I think of as the frog pool, which is right next to a rock that I have named Frog Rock:

By the standards of my woods, this is a huge frog. The blur above it and a bit to the right is one of several bugs that were flying around in front of it. I was hoping to see it try to catch one, but it didn't.

Also in the woods:

Poison ivy. Shiny and red for spring.

Anyway, back to the subject of being happy to have learned things, both from observation and reading. Due to the fact that I have spent the last several years observing and reading about the insects in my backyard, I know that ichneumon wasps do not sting. So when I woke up a couple of days ago and saw this on the skylight right above me...

... I knew I didn't have to worry about it.
 

 Before we get to the spiders and reptile, I just want to say that it was a perfectly wonderful day in the backyard, all the way into the evening, when I went outside for some sky time and could hear a barred owl in the woods. I love the things that are living around me.

I saw a lot of spiders today. I only took two pictures of spiders for Arachnid Appreciation:

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Jumping spider.

After all these years I should know what kind of spider this is, but I don't.
 

Most of the other spiders I saw were either tiny spiders on webs like the one above, which are hard to photograph when there's even a hint of breeze, or spiders in the leaf litter, and I was not up for photographing things on the ground today.
 

Backyard Reptile of the Day:

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As we were leaving for our walk in the woods I said to my husband that I have not seen any snakes yet this year. And then less than five minutes later I almost stepped on this:

This could be either a garter snake or a ribbon snake. Usually what I find are garters, but I think this one might be a ribbon. I couldn't get any closer to this one because when I almost stepped on it it zoomed down into one of the old test holes in our woods, and I could not go down after it with my recovering knee. Not to mention it would have sped off before I could get down there.

To be able to identify it I would need a better shot of its face.