The Early Bug

I am torn as to which bug to feature for Backyard Bug of the Day today, which is weird given that I saw so few bugs today. If I can't decide on a day when I only saw four bugs, it doesn't bode well for my decision making once summer comes around and I see 25 different bugs in a day.

We'll go with the unexpected. Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Small milkweed bug. Unexpected because it will be ages before there is any milkweed to dine on.

 Hiding in the leaf litter. It occurs to me that I could probably find a million bugs if I sifted through the leaf litter, but I don't want to do that. I did spot a little beetle while I was trying to get a picture of this bug, though. It also then scurried off to hide in the leaf litter. Which is precisely why I am not going to bother searching there - anything I find will just zip away to hide again.

Some Backyard Bug Drama:

 I know this doesn't look dramatic, but it was. You see, there were two bugs on this rock, and I had just focused on them and was about to press the shutter button when the (much) smaller of the two ran over to this one you see here and disappeared underneath its back end...

 The bigger bug (which was not very big) then scurried off the rock, with the other bug attached to its back end!

 They eventually disappeared under some leaf litter (of course). I don't know if this was some sort of predatory attack, or if this is a situation of a species with extreme sexual dimorphism, and they were mating.

 Lonely snow flea...

 There were a lot of crocuses blooming today, so I thought I would be able to find a lot of bugs inside them, but this was the only one I found.

 After so many spiderific days in a row I almost thought I wasn't going to find any spiders today, but I found two on the garbage can just at the end of my bug walk. Arachnid Appreciation:
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