Fruit

If you're feeling a bit of bug overload from the last couple of days, today's blog will be very restful, because I didn't get nearly as many bug pictures today.

Mostly because the bugs were behaving like this:

 Not all of them, though. Some of them just flew away before I could take their picture.

But I did get some. Like today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

 There are various techniques I have developed for taking pictures of bugs, and one of them is that if I see a cool bug, but I am too far to take a nice macro shot, if I am not sure about the bug's temperament, I will take a shot from far away (far in macrophotography terms can mean a couple of feet), in case the bug flies away before I can get any shot at all. So when this landed near me, and I realized it was something impressive I had never seen before, I chose to take a long shot first. Of course, I had just been taking pictures in the shade, and had to pause to change the camera settings. One other thing I have learned is that bugs aren't always patient. This is my long-winded way of saying that this is as close as I got before this flew away.

 So here's the same picture, zoomed in. Needless to say, I don't know what this is, but it looks to be some species of fly (and the Backyard Bug of the Day, I should clarify, is the big bug. Not the smaller bug it is preying on, and that it was carrying when it landed, and took with it when it took off again). The really impressive thing about this is that it was, for a fly, a really big bug. At least an inch and a half long, if not two inches. Definitely not something I have seen before.

Anyway, when the bugs are not cooperating, it is nice that there are things in the backyard that don't move... much... so they are easy to photograph. Which brings us to the fact that there are fruits coming along in the backyard:

 Wild strawberry

 Peach - not ripe, obviously, and probably never will be. The peaches from this tree mostly fall off before they ripen. Or get eaten by an animal while they are still unripe on the tree. But it is not outside the realm of possibility to be walking under this tree and have a small, unripe peach drop on your head. Yes, I do know this from experience.

The blueberries are changing color. Not to blue, yet, but pink.

Are you ready for Who's On the Milkweed Today?

 First, a shot of those lovely flowers. And my hand. So I guess I count among those on the milkweed today.

 And who is this creeping around the buds? Why, it's a large milkweed bug!

 Look at that amazing proboscis!

 Here the bug is performing some proboscis hygiene.

 Same bug, different view

 Different plant, two more large milkweed bugs. Suddenly they are everywhere.

 A bunch of earwigs cuddling in among the smaller leaves at the top of the stalk

 Bee

 If you've got a lot of bugs on a plant, some of them will be predators. So, here's one. There was a ladybug, too, but it declined to be photographed.

I found an egg on the underside of one of the leaves, but I don't think this is a monarch egg.

There were other bugs, as usual, but not all photographable.

Random Bugs:

This beetle looks like it's been damaged on the end of its elytra.

 Crane fly

 Caterpillars are weird.

 I think this is a robber fly.

 We think of flies as being dirty, but they spend an awful lot of time grooming themselves.

 Cabbage white butterfly. The enemy, at the moment, because I saw one laying eggs on the Brussels sprouts in the garden. But here it's just drinking nectar.

On to the scary bits of the blog - not just spiders this time...
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 This is a horrible picture, because I had just been taking picture in the shade, and forgot to change the camera settings when I went into the bright sun. So when I took this one shot of this ribbon snake right before it disappeared under some unused garden stakes, it was extremely overexposed. This is the best I could do as far as making it even slightly viewable. So what you see here is the back half of the snake. This is not the first snake I have seen this year, but it is the first I have (sort of) been able to get a shot of. It could be the same snake I saw a week or so ago - it was in the same general area of the yard. It took quite a while to see a snake this year - usually I see them earlier in the spring - but I think I have heard quite a few. There is a sound that you hear sometimes under the leaves or in the tall grass that sounds like the movements of an unseen snake...

Some creepy adorableness for Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I think this is a wolf spider, but I am not sure. It is the biggest species of spider I see in my backyard. If the front legs reached out in front, and the back legs reached behind, it would easily be over 2 inches. I know this doesn't sound adorable to you, especially if you are creeped out by spiders, but what's adorable are the lumps on her abdomen. Those are her babies. She will carry them around on her back until the are ready to go out on their own. Isn't that adorable? Interesting to note that I have seen this piggyback spider babies behavior in previous years, and it's been in the same area of the yard, on the side of the last of the raised garden beds (which is now full of wildflowers, because the weeds won. But there's milkweed in there, so that's nice). Also, to get this picture I had to crouch down low about a foot away from where the snake disappeared. Taking a picture of a spider covered with spiders, with a snake nearby - the stuff that phobias are made of!

I know, terrible picture, unless you like spider butts particularly, but I didn't see any jumping spiders yesterday, out of all those great spiders I saw, so when I spotted one today I had to get it in the blog.