Hypothesis: Everything is Cute in Baby Form

Rain. Humidity. Slugs, oh, so many slugs (I'm not going to post pictures of slugs. Bleh). Sometimes the backyard is not so pleasant.

That's when you just have to look closer. Here, you can try it with this video of what happened in the backyard today (actually, it was the front yard, but you know how we roll here):
Look closely... (Click here for video)

You probably have to watch this full screen on your computer. Don't even bother on a phone, you'll never see them. In case you haven't guessed, the praying mantises hatched from one of the egg cases on the bush in front of my front window. I didn't see the actual hatching, but the bush is now full of tiny baby praying mantises. They are absolutely adorable!

In case you can't see them in the video (they are really small. The key is to look for movement, and I promise you, there are a lot of them there), here are a whole slew of pictures of the little darlings:

 Lots and lots of pictures. Because baby praying mantises are adorable. Almost everything is adorable when it's a baby. Even baby slugs are kind of cute (but I did not take pictures of any. Because bleh).

This is the egg case, or whatever it's called for praying mantises. I knew they had hatched because of all those threads hanging out, though I don't know exactly what they are.

I suppose the baby praying mantises should be Backyard Bugs of the Day... But I found something else I am making Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think it is some kind of weevil. (Oops, forgot to make the pun).

I can't decide which picture is better, though neither is great.

Backyard Bud of the Day:

Multiflora rose. Another invasive that I should not be featuring, but I am.

 Wild strawberry (with tiny bugs on it).

Tame strawberry (which has turned a rather unappetizing color. If it doesn't change to something better, I may just let the birds have it).

Apropos of nothing:

Except, rain.

Speaking of which, here's a firefly with rain on it:

 HA! Just kidding! This is the leaf the firefly with rain on it was sitting on until the nanosecond before I pushed the shutter button on my camera, at which point it flew away!

Of course, I watched it, waited for it to land, and took its picture anyway, because that's the mood I was in.

Remember that bug from the other day that I said came in a lot of colors?

Here's a nice one.

Looks like we're going to have more moths...

This next bug is on that I think has been BBotD this year (though maybe before I started the blog), but the ones I saw today look... different.

 I see these around quite a bit.

 They always have a kind of large back end, but I have never seen them before that the wing cover (nope, haven't looked up what that's called yet) doesn't cover the back of the bug.

 There were actually two of them near each other that looked like this. My two guesses would be that they are infected with a parasite, or females about to lay eggs. I hope it's the latter. It is obviously designed to be able to expand like that, so I assume this is a normal thing. I'll check tomorrow to see if I can find them again, or to see if there are eggs laid on the leaves where I saw them.

This one is eating a hole in a leaf.

I startled the fawn again today:

This time it didn't startle me, perhaps because I was not as close to it when it burst out. And I managed to get this one picture (I even sort of had a chance to focus). It was in a different spot this time, so again it was unexpected. I am sure it is finding me really annoying by now, but you're sitting 30 feet away from a house - you should expect to see people! And I maintain that if you just sit still, I won't know you're there! We need to learn to coexist...

I did get startled by birds on the front porch again - two of them this time. Still too fast for me to even see what they were. I don't know what they are doing there - there's no sign that they are building a nest on the wreath, and both times we have startled each other has been at night with the porch light on, so maybe they are there looking for bugs to eat?

Lots of Arachnid Appreciation today (and I am not even including all of them), with more proof that anything is cute as a baby...
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But first, another view of the same kind of spider I posted yesterday:

 You can catch at least a glimpse of what it looks like on top. For Arachnid Appreciation, which is a new thing I have just started this year on the blog (in the past I have had spiders as BBotD), I have no compunction about repeating species. There aren't as many spiders in the backyard as there are other kinds of bugs.

 Here's the cute baby - I think this is a baby marbled orb weaver. It is very, very small. Almost don't see it on the web small.

This spider was obviously never given the advice "Never eat anything bigger than your own head." Actually, a lot of bugs ignore that advice...