Good Signs

Ugh, I am so running late.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I don't know what it is, but it's very tiny.

I think it's stuck...

One thing I saw a lot of today were little moths fluttering by. A few of them landed nearby, and a couple of those I actually got pictures of. None of these were things I would have seen if they didn't fly right in front of me.

Another popular bug today was this species:

 I really can't tell what they are, but they were all over. They sort of look like tiny wasps.

Many of the trees had these crawling on them.

 The interesting thing is, there were some on the ground, too...

 ... and there was this hole in the ground with ants crawling in and out, and one of the tiny waspish things crawled into the hole with the ants.

Spring is springing...

Female flower on a hazelnut tree...

 Male flowers of a hazelnut tree

 Forsythia. The forsythia appears to have had a rough winter, but it's got some buds ready to open.

 Maple tree

 First ant I have seen this year that was not walking up the trunk of a tree (I saw this before the ones I posted above. The order of the blog is a bit askew).

 What's this, you ask? Well, it was almost a picture of a bumblebee. Instead it's a picture of a bumblebee's shadow. The point is, though, that I saw a bumblebee.

 Here is the woolly bear that spent the winter in the package bin, and then died right as the weather turned nice. My best guess of why that happened is that it got hot in the package bin, which is black and would absorb the heat, and the caterpillar dehydrated. I feel kind of bummed that of the three insects/spiders whose winter quarters were known to me, two of them (this caterpillar and rain gauge spider) died before spring.

Another good spider day. Definitely DON'T scroll down if you are afraid of spider, though. One of them is a little big high on the arachnophobia scale.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 When I saw this on the tree I thought it was an ant, and wasn't going to bother to look closer. I am glad I did, because it's not an ant, it's a tiny spider.

First one of these I have seen this year. Actually, aside from some random threads, I think this is the first web I have seen this year.

And here is the second web I have seen this year. Quite an effective one, apparently.