Freeze

The temperature has dropped below freezing the last couple of nights, which I believe has discouraged the bugs from coming out during the day. They were scarce yesterday and today. But today I found a couple that were my first time spotting them this year.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Brown lacewing

Other Bugs:

 First hoverfly of the year

 The snow fleas are still around. They obviously don't mind so much when it freezes overnight.

 I think this female crane fly was ovipositing, but she was much more lethargic than I normally see. I almost stepped on her because she was immobile. I saw her when I was walking in the woods, and only had my phone camera. Pity I finally found a crane fly who was willing to sit still and I didn't have my macro lens.

This moth was on the garden shed when I got back from my walk. I was too tired to go inside and get my real camera, so this is with the cellphone camera, too.

And that's it for today's bugs. I saw a few other crane flies (of different species) and a water strider in the woods, but on my bug walk the only other bug I saw was a fly that did not stay still for a photo. It was in the 50s, but it was overcast, and I think the lack of sunshine coupled with the freeze overnight kept all of the other bugs sheltered away.

Spring's Little Things

In this part of the world, springtime is slow to come to the trees. We won't have fully leafed-out spring for a few more weeks. The signs of spring are smaller, in flowers and insects, and lots of birdsong as they stake out territory and try to find mates. Walking in the woods it still looks a lot like winter, except if you notice these small things.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Flower beetle. If you know how small bluet flowers are you will know how small this beetle is.

 Interesting eyes and mouth parts.

Other Bugs:

 Spring azure butterfly

 I didn't get a good look at this, but I think it's a robber fly

 I spotted this assassin bug nymph on a tree in the woods, and from this angle there was something I didn't notice...

 ... that I could see from this angle, which is that it had caught a crane fly as prey.

I have as many species of spiders to show you as I have bugs today. Arachnid Appreciation:
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Go Go Dandelions!

It's time for my annual exhortation to not spray pesticides on your dandelions, but let them be to feed the bees. Here's how it works: leave the dandelions alone to provide food for the bees, and later on the bees will pollinate crops to provide food for you. A lawn is an ecological wasteland, a bunch of monocultured, non-native-populated space where there is nothing for bees to eat. If you let your lawn stop being a lawn, and go back to what it was before people decided that every house needs to be surrounded by unbroken green, there would be wildflowers there for the bees to feed on in the early spring. Best case scenario, everyone would do that. At the very least you could let the wildflowers grow among the grass, so that the pollinators survive to pollinate the food crops that feed us. We need them. Support them. Don't poison them.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 Speaking of letting the wildflowers grow, I have a lot of wildflowers growing in my driveway because it is gravel and waffle block instead of blacktop. So I get lovely pollinators like this bee.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 Beetle

Meanwhile, back on the driveway:

 A bee fly

 I found another bee fly somewhere else in the backyard.

A couple of click beetles:

 Crane flies

 Wasp

 Butterfly and bee on (and flying past) pussywillow

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Backward Seasons

If not for the flowers that are blooming, I would think that we are sliding backward into winter. This was not one of those splendid spring days teeming with insects. I realize, of course, that for many people, teeming with insects is not a feature that makes a day splendid, but this is a bug blog. That's what we're about.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This looks a lot like a mosquito, but it's pretty huge for a mosquito. I am thinking some kind of crane fly. It's male, based on its fluffy, feathery antennae.

Other Bugs: Just a couple of flies on dandelions:

Arachnid Appreciation:
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This tiny spider dropped down onto my computer screen this evening.

Non-Judgemental

Sometimes when I am looking at a bug through my camera, I wonder why I ever thought that all bugs were gross and creepy. I look at their cute faces, or their fascinating features, and marvel at them, and don't understand how I came to the conclusion that something I never actually looked carefully at was too disgusting to look at. Am I going through all of life being this judgemental?

I don't have a Backyard Bug of the Day today, because I think everything I saw has already been BBotD this season. But here are the things I saw, starting with the insect that inspired these reflections:

 Click beetle

 

 

 

 Ant

 I am still seeing a lot of bumblebees in the rock garden, but I also see a lot of them in the woods, hovering over the leaf litter. This one landed and crawled under the leaves. Actually, this might be a carpenter bee, I really do need to learn the difference.

 Bee fly

 I found some more katydid eggs. The ones I found a few weeks ago are gone, and I think they were probably eaten by something, because it was too early for them to have hatched.

I found this puddle in the arm of an overturned lawn chair. I took a picture of what was floating on the water, to see if I could tell what it is:

 I didn't notice the two springtails.

 I still don't know what the rest of that is.

Crane fly?

Arachnid Appreciation:
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I think I saw this same spider on this same piece of wood yesterday.

Bowl and doily spider