Suddenly Spring

 I'm still not getting out to the woods every day yet, and this time of year, the time of great change, missing a couple of days means that everything seems to change very suddenly. So today when I went out to the woods it was overwhelming how lush and green it is. Overwhelming in a good way. The woods are leafed out, from the ferns and skunk cabbage in the understory all the way to the treetops. It's gorgeous. Not going out every day makes me feel like I am missing things, though. I haven't brought my camera much lately, because with my knee not up to strength I worry about falling, and either breaking my camera, or breaking myself in my attempt to protect my camera. But today I saw a cool crane fly just as I was setting out, and decided to walk back to the house to get my camera. I generally always regret not bringing it at some point when I don't have it, but I figured if I brought it, I would not see anything to photograph, especially as it was nearing dusk. Anyway, a few weeks ago I saw mayflies on a couple of walks, and haven't seen one since, and I figured that I had missed the entire rest of mayfly season. 

But I had not. Backyard Bug of the Day:

Mayfly. But you probably already guessed that.

Last week, a couple of nights before the full moon we decided to do our walk late in the evening, so we could walk in the moonlight. With the trees almost fully leafed out we knew we would not be able to walk without flashlights, like we can on moonlit nights in the winter, but it would still be pretty. The moon played hide and seek among the clouds while we were out there, though, so it was quite dark at times, but I sometimes turned off my flashlight just to appreciate the darkness. During one of those times I spotted something I would not have seen with my light on.

Backyard Bug of the Day from May 15:

Firefly larva. Not the bright green in the upper left, the insect in the middle. I saw it glowing on the ground, which I could not photograph with my phone, so I did the next best thing: shine my flashlight on it, so even if you don't get to see it glow, you now know what a firefly larva looks like.

A couple of days later I was out on my back porch looking at the stars and saw my first fireflies of the season. It was pretty early for sighting them, so I was thrilled. Since then I have only seen one, though. Curious...

All right, so it's been a while since I blogged, let me see what I need to catch up on before I get to today's other bugs...

Some cool bugs attracted to the front porch light on May 12th:

Ichneumon wasp, I think.

Crane fly

Moth

This would have been the Backyard Bug of the Day on May 14th if it had been more cooperative:

 

THIS is Backyard Bug of the Day from May 14th:

Springtail among dandelion seeds

I didn't post it on that day, but this is Backyard Bug of the Day for May 17th:

Carpenter bee making a home in the base of my mailbox

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a lot of leaf damage on a sassafras tree in my backyard, but I could not find the insects that were causing it. Then some days later I noticed similar leaf damage on a sassafras tree in the front yard, and this time the culprits were still there:

Weevils. There are three here; two of them are working on creating more weevils. The third one had also been trying to get involved in that activity, but did not succeed.

On a walk in the woods, with my camera, not my phone, on May 19th:

Moth. It may be obvious in the picture, but out in the wild I had to look closely to be sure that's what I was seeing.

Now, back to today's lovely walk...

I found a multiflora rose bush with several lady beetles on it, including these two:

And this one.

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

This is a fly that was killed by a fungus infection.

Stonefly

Forest tent caterpillar. 

I slogged through some mud that tried to pull off my shoe to look at these flowers, as they are new to me; I don't think these were in my woods the last couple of springs. I did not notice the tiny beetle when I took the picture, can you spot it?

I don't know what species this caterpillar is, but there is a curious thing about it. If you look at the frass (which is caterpillar poop, and yes, I know, you think it's weird that I am telling you to look at poop), instead of just dropping its frass, or flinging it away as some caterpillar species do, this one strings them on silk, and sometime you'll see these caterpillars with a string of them hanging from their back end. Weird, and I have no idea why it does this, but you can see the string between the pieces of frass.

Fly
 

I don't have a picture, but I saw my first hummingbird of the year last week. I was sitting on the back porch and it zoomed right past me, and flew into the woods.

This is now the season for walking face-first into spiderwebs about every ten feet on the trail, which is not my favorite way to appreciate arachnids, but I did find a few for Arachnid Appreciation today:

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