At One With Nature

Today I told myself that I was not allowed to look out the window until I got done some things that needed to get done. I mean, I could look out the window, but not look out the window. No gazing out at the beautiful day, the blooming flowers, the bugs in the rock garden... Nope. Just glance out to see what the weather's doing, a quick peek while opening the curtains, that's all. In an unusual turn of events, I actually did what I told myself to do, and did not end up derailing my whole day as I have done on occasion. Not that the derailings aren't rewarding in their own way, but sometimes you just have to get stuff done.

The backyard rewarded me for my virtue, and provided a satisfying bug hunt today. Starting with something I have never seen before for Backyard Bug of the Day. A new bug is always rewarding, and though it was not as beautiful as yesterday's new bug, it was more interesting, and new bugs two days in a row, after 4 years of looking at bugs in my backyard, is pretty impressive.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This was hard to get a picture of because it was fast and moved a lot, so I was chasing it around the rock garden, but it was harder to catch up with than even yesterday's butterfly. As I was looking at it, I was wondering what it was. Is it a bee? Is it a fly? Is it a moth? And even looking at the pictures later, it sort of looks like a bee, a fly, and a moth, and also a kiwi, which is a flightless bird from New Zealand. I knew it was not a kiwi, but it could have been any of the others. Fortunately, I actually found success in looking it up: it is a bee fly. Which, to clarify, is a species of fly, not a species of bee. It's hard to tell exactly what kind of bee fly it is, because the pictures aren't great in the book, but it appears to belong to the wonderfully named genus Bombylius, and might actually be the species Bombylius major. As if this bug wasn't wonderful enough, it has the name Bombylius major. Sigh.

 It was actually also a bit like a hummingbird in that it didn't really land on the flowers most of the time, it would just hover as it drank the nectar from them.

It did land briefly, though, so here's a shot of the wings at rest.

Yesterday I was all excited at my first encounter with the spring azure butterfly. Today I encountered at about five of them. It is possible that I met some of them more than once, but I know for a fact that there were at least 2 different ones, because at one point I saw two at once, and of the ones I got a good look at, there were definitely different spot patterns on the wings.

 Different spot pattern from the one yesterday. I never got a good look at the dorsal side of the wings, because it did not do what yesterday's butterfly did and open them for me to see, but I did see the blue as it was flying, and I am pretty sure it did not have the wide, dark stripe at the edge that would mean it was female, so it's male. I think all of the ones I have seen have been male.

 It sat on the grass (it was in the backyard, not the rock garden) and let me get really close. But see that red blob near its foot? That is a mite that also got really close, but the butterfly did not like that, and it kind of kicked it away.

 A different butterfly, and my attempt to get a shot of it flying. In the past I have developed a rule that I will not chase butterflies to get pictures of them, because invariably they just fly high up into the sky, but that has gone out the window the last 2 days, and I definitely chased this one.

It paid off:

 Here it was doing that rubbing-the-wings-together thing, so you can see a hint of blue.

 

 Tiny butterfly on a tiny flower.

 Curly tongue

Still amusing... At this point it had walked from one flower to the other in this bunch of two, and I was sitting on the ground with my camera, and the flower it moved to was the one that was closer to me, which means that this butterfly actually came closer to me and my camera. Definitely not skittish about me being there.

Speaking of butterflies... Yesterday I caught a glimpse of a mourning cloak butterfly out the window, and today I arrived at the rock garden on my bug walk just a couple of seconds too late, as a mourning cloak was just flying away. I was feeling disappointed at having missed it twice, but then after my bug walk I was looking out the window later (I know it sounds like I spend all my time staring out of windows like Mr. Darcy in the 1995 mini-series of Pride and Prejudice, but I don't), and I saw the mourning cloak in the rock garden. So... out I went! And this time...

 The butterflies have been really cooperative the last two days...

 The ventral side of the mourning cloak wing looks just like tree bark, which is excellent camouflage. Mourning cloaks overwinter as butterflies, as opposed to caterpillars, pupae, or even eggs, as most Lepidoptera do, in wood piles or leaf litter - see, another insect that uses leaf litter! This wing pattern is handy to avoid being eaten while you're frozen.

 Mourning cloaks live for about a year, but the spring, when they emerge and mate, is toward the end of their life span, so you can see that this one is a bit battered.

 Mourning cloaks use their dark wings to soak up sunlight for passive solar heating, from what I have read. Mourning cloaks are called a harbinger of spring, because they are around very early in the season, and can even be out at the tail end of winter, since they overwinter as adults, and don't have to pupate or eclose. Obviously this makes the solar heating thing very handy. I do remember that the first butterfly I saw last year was a mourning cloak, and that I was surprised to see a butterfly so soon. Now I know why.

 Of course, you know what I like about it - the blue dots on the wings!

And who else did I see in the backyard today? Let's start with who else I saw in the rock garden, since 2 of the 3 bugs I just showed you were there:

 There were a lot of bees. The rock garden was teeming with bees, of many species. I even saw a cool, tiny, red one. However, I got very few pictures of bees, because they were all very busy. I did not get a picture of the red one. I barely got a picture of this one.

 I was out in the rock garden twice today, once on my bug walk, and once when I went back out because the mourning cloak was there. During the first visit in the early afternoon, there were a lot of different bees around, but no bumblebees. During the second visit, which was a couple of hours later, there were fewer bees in general, but the bumblebees had arrived.

 I saw these two bugs zooming around (and occasionally landing) over the leaf litter, and I thought, "I wish they would come closer and land so I can take their picture." Then they did this. Landed right on my shoe.

There were lots of flies around the leaf litter. There are two in this picture.

So, after the flies landed on my shoe, a tree dripped sap on my head. My thought then was that I do like to be close to nature, but there is such a thing as too close. Then another tree dripped sap on my shirt, just for good measure (oh, and later the mourning cloak butterfly landed on my leg, though I didn't get it's picture there because it flew off too fast. And remember that yesterday the butterfly landed on my forehead. And for the last two days I have been followed around the backyard by swarms of gnats. Maybe the bugs have finally accepted me as one of them).

 Anyway, the black birches have been dripping sap lately. See the wet spot on this leaf? Sap.

 The ants like it.

 Cranefly

 For some reason in this one shot of this cranefly there is a red mark on its head and its abdomen. It kind of looks like a reflection, but I don't know of what.

 Moth

 A couple of click beetles today:

 Fly. So many flies today.

Some sad backyard news - the mourning doves appear to have abandoned their nest. No bird has been on the nest for the last couple of days.

 I will now bombard you with a plethora of pictures of a beautiful jumping spider for Arachnid Appreciation:
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 ... Aaaaaaand we're done.