Mowing

Today I mowed the lawn for the first time this year. It probably didn't really need it yet, but it was getting pretty shaggy in a few spots (particularly under the lawn furniture, for some reason), so I figured I might as well do it. I don't have a lot of lawn for the size of my yard, because I let most of it grow wild, and so I mostly just mow paths between areas that are meant to be full of wildflowers. It's a good environment for wildlife - and bugs. Ever since I got my macro lens it takes me about twice as long to mow the lawn because I keep stopping to take pictures of things that I see while I am mowing. Like bugs.

And mushrooms.

Is it weird to have a favorite fungus? Because I have a favorite fungus.

It's called cedar apple rust. It doesn't look like much here, but it's awesome when it's wet. I am kind of surprised it's all dried up, given how much rain we had the other day. Well, next time it rains I'll get another picture of it.

I found quite a few cool bugs today. Also some toads (YAY! I have already seen more toads this year than I did all of last year, which is a good sign) and some snakes. I will post pictures of the snakes and spiders for the day at the end, so you can skip scrolling to the end if you are squeamish about them.

First, Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think it's a cranefly? At any rate, she was flitting all over, laying eggs in the ground. Very cool to watch (but hard to photograph... I know, I say that a lot... It took me about 50 shots to get these three!). She laid a lot of eggs.

 A few other cool bugs, too:

 Another really, really tiny bug. It looks blue, but when I zoomed in close to look at it on the computer, it's really striped of blue and green:

 In the closer picture of this one you can see a lot of smaller bugs on its back. I don't know if it's covered with parasites, or if those are its young that it is carting around on its back. The latter would be cute, but there's something so funny about bugs with bugs...

Ants don't get a lot of BBotD love, because they are commonplace, there are so many of them, and yet it's hard to tell if I've taken pics of a particular species or not, they invade my house every summer, and they just don't sit still to have their picture taken. I thought these looked cool, though. They communicate by touching antennae, I think.

I found today's Backyard Bud of the Day in the middle of the lawn. Its flowers were so tiny I could not tell they really were flowers until I leaned down to get a closer look. I mowed around it.

Okay, now we get to the creepy crawlies. If you have either arachnophobia or herpetophobia (I am just guessing that is the name for a fear of snakes?), stop now. But really, this snake is so cute, you should keep going. Except the spiders are going to come first, and they are not the cute kind of spiders. They're not bad, really, but they're not the adorable ones with the (8) soulful eyes.

Still here?

I'll start with some arachnid appreciation. Here's the spiders...

I tried to get another angle on this second one, but it started crawling toward my hand, so I decided this was enough.




Now for the snake. I don't see snakes often, and today I actually saw three - I know it was three different ones, because the sizes and colors were a different, but I think they were all the same species. I think they are ribbon snakes, which I think are a kind of garter snake (you see how confident I am in my herpetological knowledge?). I only got pictures of one of them, though, because the other two bolted when they saw me. I tried not to take it personally.

Isn't it cute? Obviously the macro lens is not ideal for taking pictures of snakes, but sometimes you work with what's on the camera.

Life is beautiful, don't you think?