Holding On Tight

March is going out like a lion and it is ROARING. I don't know what the wind speeds were today (I have an anemometer, but I don't know where it is. And I think it needs a new battery), but they were FIERCE. I think we have had tropical storms here with less wind. I kind of got the feeling that a lot of the bugs I saw today were hanging on for dear life. I don't know how any of them were able to fly in such weather (It really didn't seem to bother the bumblebees in the rock garden, but maybe the house was working as a windbreak for them. They just blithely bumbled from flower to flower). It was a warm day, though, and so the wind was not painful and bone chilling. It actually felt kind of exciting to be out in it, although I was nervous about some of the trees' violent thrashings.

There is no doubt about it, spring is in the air.

And it is growing in my backyard:

 Pussywillows

 Not just leaves on the crab apple, but flower buds, too.

 The Canada mayflowers have sprouted. I wonder if they will wait until May to bloom.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think this is a thrips, but I am not sure. I looked up thrips and it says they have wings, which this does not have. But then something else I read seemed to imply that not all thrips have wings. Anyway, that's what it looks like to me.

 It was tiny, and wouldn't stop moving, so I didn't get any really good pictures of it, showing both the front and the back ends in focus. But I got some okay shots showing one or the other.

 Sharing the same rock with the thrips was this moth.

And another on a nearby tree. Again today I saw a lot of these moths. I don't know how they were able to fly in that wind, but they did. Still, some of them - this one and the one above, looked like they were hunkered down against the wind.

As did some of the bees I saw:

 I spotted this one clinging to the kitchen window.

 Then when I went out to get the mail I found this one hanging onto a daffodil for dear life.

 And this one was doing the same thing. This is a really tiny bee.

 Love that eye.

 It then crawled inside the daffodil, and when I looked in, I saw that there were already two other bees in there.

There was a bit of pushing and shoving.

Remember last week there was a bee that I thought had died inside a daffodil. Well, now I am not so sure. It stayed in there for a couple of days, which seemed to reinforce that it had died, but then it appeared to have moved to a new spot inside. And the next day it was gone. And I have seen other bees in there, and they crawl in and just stay very still. Of these three bees, one of them didn't move while I was observing them, even though the other two were scuffling around and over it. So maybe they can just be in there, feeding on nectar, for days?

Okay, what else have we got today...

 Click beetle hiding in tree bark

 Some sort of stinkbug, I think, not hiding on the side of the house. I have seen these before, but always way at the end of summer. I wonder if they overwinter as adults and this one is just emerging.

 I kind of expect it to say, "I am Groot" with that face.

Wasp

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Jumping spider on the house

 Jumping spider on the picnic table, which needs a paint job.

Flowers = Bees

Yesterday was a lion, and today was a lamb. It was beautiful. I love springtime.

Today the rock garden finally became the bug magnet it should be. There were bees aplenty buzzing from flower to flower. It was lovely. I didn't get pictures of most of them because they were too fast for me, and those pictures I did get were mostly out of focus because the lamb of a day still had a bit of a breeze, but I was happy to see so many different kinds of bees there, even if I didn't get even a close look at most of them. But the rock garden is where I found the Backyard Bug of the Day.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I am not sure if this is a wasp or a bee... or something else...

 Bee

 I think this is a sweat bee

 Bumblebee, of course. A huge one, or huge as bumblebees go.

There were other bugs in the rock garden, too:

  A fly

 Several species of ants, though this is the only one I got a picture of.

Actually, what I saw the most of today was those little moths that flit past me as I walk, and mostly land in inaccessible places, but sometimes not. There were a lot of things flitting past today, and most of them were dried leaves, but a lot of them were these moths.

 Here's one that landed where I could see it well.

 I love the little splash of blue on its shoulder... Do moths have shoulders? Also, moths have cool eyes.

 Another one that landed at my feet.

Last fall there was a bush whose leaves turned a really pretty pink, and on a few nice days I found a lot of candy striped leaf-hoppers congregating there. Well, today I looked for candy striped leaf hoppers on the mountain laurel and didn't find any, but when I looked at the buds on that pink-in-the-fall bush, I found a candy striped leaf hopper. I would love to know where it spent the winter.

 The leaf buds are pink in the spring.

And speaking of buds...

 A couple of forsythia flowers have opened, but I found that a couple of buds had holes bored in them. I wonder if something bored its way in, or out?

If you read this blog you probably know how I feel about mourning doves, which is that I cannot stand them. One of the reasons I cannot stand them is their tendency to explode out of a bush (or out from under the front porch) and startle me. Yes, I realize they do this because I have frightened them by suddenly appearing, but it is still a massive overreaction, and no other birds in my backyard do this. If I get too close to other birds, they just fly away. Mourning doves have to make a massive spectacle of it. Anyway, yesterday this happened to me as I walked past a cedar tree in the backyard, and then it happened in the exact same spot again today, which made me wonder if there was something in that tree...

 Yes, there is - a mourning dove nest. It looked a bit like yesterday's winds had damaged it - it's not in the picture, but a big chunk has fallen off. Anyway, I guess I need to avoid that part of the yard for a while if they are nesting there.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I think this is a bowl-and-doily spider, although it didn't have a full bowl-and-doily web.

Lion or Lamb?

I am sure you have heard the saying about the month of March, it comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb. Actually, I am not sure if that's it - my whole life I have been unclear if it comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, or comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion. It's obviously not true, either one of them, because if there actually was a consistent pattern like that to the month of March, I would know which one it was just based on the fact that that is what would happen. But every March is different. Not many of them are as warm as this one, and we have frequently had some significant snowstorms in March, but really it can be mild or wild. Still, the beginning of March is winter, and the end is spring, and the weather is generally warmer and milder at the end, so it probably is in like a lion, out like a lamb. At any rate, I think the adage is mostly a reference to the fact that March has a reputation of being a very windy month. I am not sure if that is backed up by actual data, but that is the folklore. I have never noticed that March is especially windy compared to other months. It seems to be windy here most of the time. I was thinking about all of these things today when I was doing my bug walk because it was powerfully windy in the backyard today. The kind of windy that roars like a lion. The kind of windy that makes you nervous about walking around near trees, and makes you avoid the part of the yard where there is a dead tree. The kind of windy that when you are taking a picture of a mite on the trunk of a tree, and you rest your hand on the tree trunk to steady the camera, you can feel the tree trunk moving in the wind. So as I was experiencing all of this, and thinking about lions and lambs, I thought to myself that this March is definitely going out like a lion, after being like a lamb most of the month. It was funny, then, that when I went inside and read (belatedly) Saturday's newspaper, the weather column said that this March will be going out like a lamb. Evidently the weather is going to warm up by Thursday, the last day of the month, and I can hear that today's wind has already died down. I find it a little bit ironic, though, that the forecast for next week is for highs in the 40s all week. That is colder than we've been all through March.

Anyway, you might be wondering why I didn't post yesterday. That is because it rained all day, and I didn't get a chance to go out until early in the evening when it finally stopped drizzling. I was going out for the evening, so I didn't have a lot of time to look for bugs, and between the rainy day and the fact that it was cold, I didn't find any. Well, that's not true, I found a winter firefly, but I have posted those a lot lately, and it has already been Backyard Bug of the Day, so I really had nothing to blog about. However, I did find a spider, which I forgot about last night when I was thinking that there was nothing to blog. I'll post that at the end of today's blog, even though that is breaking the Blog Rules. It's my blog, I can break the rules if I want to.

Here is the glorious thing about the backyard today:

One of the flowering crab apple trees has leaves! They are not fully unfurled, but they are open enough that the tree is obviously green! Sigh. So wonderful. I happened to be looking at pictures from 2009 last night, and this didn't happen until the middle of April that year.

Oh, and I got a tick bite today. I am very annoyed. And I guess that means the garlic pills don't work.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Earwig. Female, I think.

There were two bumblebees in the rock garden today!

 Here's one...

And here's the other...

This moth spent all day on the wall of the front porch.

I found this moth on a tree:

 Can you see it?

 Okay, I'll help you out. I couldn't get a better picture because it was about 7 feet up, and I am only 5 foot 4 1/4. Probably an inch taller in my gardening clogs. I only saw it because it moved.

 There was one candy striped leaf hopper on the mountain laurel today, and it looked like it was huddled there for shelter from the winds, and the cold (it was only 51ºF).

 Bugs let you know when they don't want their picture taken.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Mite

 Yesterday's spider