Purple Carpet of Spring

 Spring is in full swing as far as the flowers in the rock garden are concerned, although not much else is in complete agreement. The bugs I expect to find in the rock garden during this season are certainly not; with a carpet of purple flowers there's usually a symphony of buzzing wings as a soundtrack when you walk by, but insects have been scarce again this year, which continues to worry me. I saw my first bumblebee of the season yesterday, and today happened to find another for Backyard Bug of the Day:

When I got home from Easter mass this morning I spotted a butterfly and a bumblebee in the rock garden, and while they both flew off before I could even attempt to take a picture with my phone, I went inside and got my camera and after waiting patiently for a couple of minutes a bumblebee came back (I have no way of knowing if it was the same one).

I didn't have a lot of time for a walk in the woods today, but I took my camera out with me anyway, in the hopes of seeing some bugs–well, in the hopes of seeing a mourning cloak butterfly, to be honest. I didn't, although I did catch a glimpse from afar of another butterfly. I was nowhere near close enough to identify it, but if could have been a comma or question mark, which are also the two possible ids of the one I saw in the rock garden this morning.

I actually didn't see many bugs on my walk, other than gnats, which I wasn't able to photograph. But I unwittingly took photos of a couple of them that I didn't see at the time:

Do you see the bugs?

From the red visible inside these bugs' bodies, I think these flies were biting this frog and feeding on its blood.

I didn't notice any of these bugs when I was taking the pictures of the frogs.

The frogs were at the small pond, where there are still no salamander egg masses–sadly, it is beginning to look like I was right last year when I prophesied that there would not be eggs there anymore if no salamanders hatched there last year. However, I have spotted a couple more egg masses in the big pond:

The macro lens is not a great tool for a shot like this, but that's what I had with me today.

Another interesting sign of spring is clumps of hair that I am pretty sure are from deer shedding their heavier winter coats. 

Arachnid Appreciation:

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I almost walked right into this tiny spider's tiny web:

We seem to have figured out where the snakes hang out–or at least, these two snakes, which we have spotted several times this week in the same location:

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It's hard to tell, but this one is wet; it had obviously been in the water. I was surprised last year when I saw a garter snake in the stream, and in spite of the fact that I saw that, I was surprised a few days ago when I got too close to one and it zipped into the water.