Crawling

I can't wait for all the plants in the backyard to leaf out and bloom. There are a lot of reasons for this, mainly because it looks nice that way, but other reasons too, and one of them is that when that happens a lot of the bugs will be at my eye level or at least above waist level. I may have to bend down to take a picture at waist level, but lately a huge percentage of the bugs I have found have been on the ground. There is no way to take close-up pictures of bugs on the ground that is not awkward. I spent most of my bug walk today on my knees and elbows in the dirt, and in a variety of other uncomfortable and unattractive poses (another benefit of the plants leafing out - less likely that anyone else will see me when I am doing my bug walk).

Thank goodness that some of the bugs are on tree trunks. It's better for my back and knees if I can take pictures standing up.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Beetle of some kind.

We just bought a new azalea bush, and it hasn't even been planted yet and is attracting bees.

 This beetle was Backyard Bug of the Day recently, and I found it on a dandelion. Today I found it on the same dandelion plant (new bloom). Here it has fallen off the flower and is on the leaves.

 One bloom on the crab apple tree yesterday, a thousand today (no, I did not count them). I took this picture just to show the tree in bloom, but looking at the picture I discovered there is a bug in it. Can you find it?

 The creeping myrtle in the rock garden is just about done blooming, and with so few blooms left, there are fewer bugs. Now they are all attracted to this tree, and when you stand under it, looking up at it, you can see the many, many bees buzzing from flower to flower, and even without being able to see any of them up close it is obvious that there are a variety of different species of bees because there are many different sizes. That is a thing not easy to photograph, but here is one bee (honeybee?) attracted to the blooms.

I found a bunch of click beetles competing to pass on their genetic material. In each of these pictures you should look carefully to see how many beetles there are - they are not all in focus in each picture. It was hard to get picture of them because they kept moving - the female was trying to burrow under the leave, and up to four males were trying to stay with her:

 Look how much bigger then female is than the males!

The click beetles are not the only ones reproducing on this hot April day:

 Female cranefly ovipositing.

 Not a stinger.

I was working on building something and this bug - a True Bug - was crawling all over the box. Here it is playing dead because I am trying to take its picture. Note the proboscis, which is what makes it a Hemiptera, a True Bug.

In addition to the arbor I have mentioned in the past where we have a picnic table, we have another arbor that is just a gate-like arbor. It is broken, so I am replacing it, and today I was working on that project and pulled a broken piece of it out of the ground and cast it aside. Later I happened to look at it and realized it was not just a broken piece of the arbor. It was a formicary:

 A formicary is an ants' nest. There were ants scurrying all over the broken metal tube.

 Some were carrying eggs.

Have you noticed, by the way, how many of these pictures are of bugs on the ground (which includes the ants and the bug in the box)?