Color My World

I don't know what to say today. I am too tired to be interesting. Apparently so were the bugs, today, because I didn't find many. Granted, it was early evening by the time I went for my bug walk, and it was gloomy all day, but it was warm. I'd have thought they'd appreciate that.

Nope. You know you're reaching for something interesting when you have to choose a gnat for Backyard Bug of the Day:

The macro lens never really gives you a sense of how small things are, but I can tell you that this little creature is only a few millimeters long. Quite tiny.

The gnat was the most cooperative bug I saw today. Mostly the few bugs I saw were more like this:

I think ants are going to be a bit overwhelming in the backyard this year. There are a lot of holes in the ground all of a sudden, and they appear to be ant holes.

 They seem really wide for ant holes, but I have seen a couple that had ants coming in and out - as you saw yesterday - and the ones coming out of this hole today were carrying dirt.

It's so nice to see color creeping into the yard. First the crocuses, soon there will be daffodils, and little sprouts of things are showing colors other than gray and brown.

 Flowering crab apple leaf bud.

 Blooming forsythia

 Don't know what this is, but the flowers are tiny.

Spiders had the best turnout again today. Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I zoomed in that picture so you could actually see the spider.

 Obviously all of those black flies and other small flying things are a bonanza for the spiders, and there are a lot of spiders around to catch them.

 This is sort of an unusual view of a jumping spider for me. I hardly ever get a shot of them from the side, because they have eyes on the side of their head/cephalothorax, and so they can see me, and when they see me, they usually turn to face the camera at least partly. They like to face danger head on. And sometime jump on danger's head.

What a gorgeous little being.