Natural Humor

Happy Spring!

 Oh, Nature has such a sense of humor! Sorry I didn't wish you a Happy Spring yesterday, the actual first day of spring, but I was away. I did check, though, when I got back (just as it was getting dark), and saw that the daffodil bloomed on the first day of spring. Obviously the daffodil has a great sense of occasion. And then we got snow on the second day of spring.

This is what it looked like two hours later, though. By the end of tomorrow it will probably all be gone. It will definitely all be gone by Wednesday if the forecast holds true and the temperature goes back up into the 60s.

I debated whether to do a bug walk today, because it was still pretty cold (mid-40s), even though it was sunny and warm enough to start melting the snow. But I hadn't been in my backyard for a couple of days, so I went out.

 I found some gnats in the snow. I have no idea what they were doing there. However, it made them sluggish and slow, and therefore easier than usual to take pictures of.

 Gnats were the most common bug today...

 I even found one on a daffodil. On, not in.

But here's today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Cranefly, I think.

 Nice iridescence.

 I am going to guess this is a female, ovipositing?

Not a bug:

 As in, not an insect - I know most of the things I refer to as bugs are not bugs (i.e. insects of the order Hemiptera, aka True Bugs), but this isn't even an insect. I am not sure what it is classified as, although it as an arthropod. Too many legs for my taste; I find it creepy.

Part of a bug:

A bit of beetle on moss?

I found this on the ground today:

 Obviously the flower of a tree. The remarkable thing about it is, I have never seen this before. At first I thought it was a caterpillar. There were several of them on the ground, so naturally, realizing this was a tree's flower, I looked up and saw the tree in flower. I have been walking past that tree for 17 springtimes, and have never seen one of these flowers. I am so embarrassingly unobservant sometimes. I am telling myself that it is this unusual spring that is the reason the flower has fallen looking like this - maybe other years the flowers looked different by the time they dropped. But I still feel like a dope, especially since I am constantly talking about how important it is to pay attention to the beauty of the life that surrounds you. Sheesh. Anyway, it is beautiful.

Here's the tree in question.

No spiders again today. Well, the last three days were cold, I feel lucky to have found anything at all today. After all, we did have several inches of snow for our first full day of spring!