Happy Springtime

Today was a happy day of bug hunting. Or not so much hunting, because I didn't have to hunt for the bug that made me happy, it just showed up. But there was definitely some triumph of perseverance to be celebrated, and a momentous occasion in the annals of this backyard bug chronicle. But enough gobbledegook. It will be a long enough story as it is.

I found today's Backyard Bug of the Day before I went on my bug walk - before I even went outside, in fact, I looked out the window at the rock garden, and saw a butterfly. You remember a couple of days ago when I saw a butterfly out the window and by the time I got outside it was nowhere to be seen? Well, that was a window onto the backyard, where at present there isn't much to interest a butterfly. But the rock garden is full of blooming flowers, so I knew that there was a good chance that if I grabbed my camera and put on some shoes, the butterfly might still be hanging around by the time I went out there. So, I did. And the butterfly was still there. From a distance it looked like the same kind of butterfly from the other day, and of course I never saw the one the other day up close, so I don't know if they were the same or not. Today's butterfly I got much closer to.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Ah, you were expecting a better picture? Just wait. Protocol requires that the first picture of a butterfly be taken at a bit of a distance just to make sure I get a picture, because sometimes this is as close as I can get. I should point out also that although you can't really see them in this picture, the rock garden is made up of rocks that just happen to be mostly covered up by the creeping myrtle, which has creeped all over them. It is difficult enough to walk around on rocks, and much harder when you can't actually see them. So chasing a butterfly around the rock garden is a tricky activity.

 After the first far-off picture, then I try to get closer and closer to the butterfly, to see how close I can get, but making sure that I get decent, in focus pictures wherever I can.

 I was surprised to be able to get this close...

At this point I was assuming this was a hairstreak butterfly (with my extremely poor knowledge in general of butterflies), and getting a peek at the blue body was my first sign that this was something more interesting than many hairstreaks. A lot of them are kind of drab and brown or gray on the dorsal side of their wings, but the thing is that the ventral side of the wings looks completely different. Different from the dorsal side, that is. I find that all of the hairstreak butterflies look kind of similar on the ventral side (which is what we are seeing here). Anyway, I never saw one with a blue body before.

Getting closer... I should point out also that by the time I got this shot, I had been chasing the butterfly around the garden for several minutes. Most of the time when I would land I didn't get a shot at all. It would land, I would move close, it would fly. It would flutter around in crazy meanderings for a while, sometimes in a small area, and sometimes shooting to the other side of the rock garden, where I had to chase it over the rocks. One time it landed on my forehead, which is not a convenient place for me to get a picture of it. But I persevered, and it let me get this close...

 ... then it let me get this close...

 ... then it let me get this close...

 ... then it let me get THIS close... tantalizing hints of blue...

 ... then it let me get THIS close. Look at those scales!

So, eventually it flew away. I was pretty psyched by my success with this butterfly, but there was one little disappointment, which is that I didn't get a chance to see the dorsal side of the wings up close. I could see that they looked blue when the butterfly was flying, but sometimes hairstreaks look blue and turn out to be gray. Anyway, I went in the house and started looking in my books to find out what kind of butterfly it was. It was an inconclusive search, in part because most of my bug books only show one side of the wings, either the dorsal OR the ventral, which is not helpful if you only saw one side of the butterfly. And like I said, to me, most of the hairstreaks look the same. But in looking them up I found on that not all butterflies of this size and this kind of pattern are hairstreaks, as I thought. Some of them are Blues... I began to think that maybe that's what this butterfly was, but again, I only saw one side of the wings for sure. None of the pictures were very helpful, nor was an internet search when I looked up hairstreaks. I chuckled as I read the description of one of the butterflies - it said that it was a slow-flying species, and I knew immediately that that was NOT what I had seen, regardless of the picture. My butterfly was fast.

A few minutes later I happened to look out at the rock garden and the butterfly was back! So, grabbed the camera again, put on my shoes, and went out to see if I could get a look at the dorsal side of the wings.

 I didn't get as close this time, but the butterfly was quite cooperative.

 And amusing, the way it leaned into the flowers...

 ... really, really leaned in. For the size of the butterfly, these flowers are deep.

 It posed quite nicely...

 ... here's a zoomed-in look at that shot.

 See the curled tongue?

 Zoomed in...

Now, the thing about hairstreak butterflies is that I don't think I have ever gotten a picture of one with its wings open, because I have never seen one sitting like that. They do rub their wings back and forth, which gives you a tiny glimpse of the dorsal color as the wings are briefly out of line with each other. This butterfly did that a bit, and I could see that it was definitely blue. I was very excited - I LOVE the color blue! There are not nearly enough blue bugs, and I never get to see blue butterflies! I have been longing for years to see a blue butterfly! And now I knew that this one was blue, at least partly. So, figuring that the butterfly would not open its wings, I figured the next best thing would be to try to get a shot of it flying, because even though it would be totally out of focus, at least it would show the color. Thus I started trying to get a shot of the butterfly in the air, which means I would watch it while it fed on a flower, and then when it flew to another flower, I would try to take a picture while it was in the air. Well, remember when I said this butterfly was fast? Sometimes it was onto a new flower before I could even react, much less get a picture.

I did get a couple of shots, which I didn't even know had even marginally worked until I looked at them on the computer:

 Lower right hand corner...

 Upper middlish...

 Lower right hand corner - it's actually in pretty good focus, considering!

 Mostly the pictures look like this, with no butterfly in them.

 So there I was, hovering over the butterfly, waiting for it to fly, and...

 ... and it opened its wings! It opened its wings and just sat there! I have never seen a hairstreak do that! Of course, as I found out later, it's probably actually a male Spring Azure. Which is a beautiful name for a beautiful butterfly. But since at the time I thought this was a hairstreak, and I have never seen a hairstreak do this, it was a wonderful surprise! And it was blue, blue, blue, blue, blue! So beautiful!

 It let me get closer, and I probably could have gotten closer than this, but I was in an awkward position. I am happy just to have gotten what I got from this beautiful butterfly. I was in a good mood all day because of this butterfly. And then I went inside, put down my camera, walked into another room and glanced out the window as I was walking through and saw ANOTHER butterfly! This one looked like a mourning cloak butterfly - very different from this one. I went for the camera again, but it was gone by the time I got outside. Still, two butterflies in one day when I have been yearning for butterflies, was wonderful.

Also, notice all the perseverance demonstrated in all of that butterfly chasing and hovering and such.

Look, the bluets are looking happy today, too!

 It was a beautiful, sunshiny, warm, spring day!

So, who else was in the rock garden today? A lot of bumblebees and other bees that I did not get pictures of. Also:

 A wasp (probably a few wasps, actually, but this is the one I got a shot of).

 Flies...

 And a couple of ants that were carrying sowbug corpses.

 Another bee/wasp

A small milkweed bug on the front walk right next to the rock garden.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the backyard:

 This is a zoomed-in crop from a picture of a spider, but there are things in it I want to show the general blog-reading audience, including the arachnophobes who skip the spider part of the blog. I have some plastic Adirondack chairs in the backyard, and I like to keep them on their sides because it helps to keep the birds from pooping on them, but lately the wind has been blowing them over so that they are face down. Well, when they are face down water collects in wells made by the curve of the arms, so this is most undesirable, because standing water is where mosquitoes breed. So, seeing the chairs blown over again, and knowing that it rained yesterday, I went to tilt the chairs onto their sides and found that one of the puddles in the arms was occupied. Obviously, from how I began this story, there was a spider there, but there were also several of these flies, which might have been spider prey, and might have just got stuck in the water somehow, I don't know. I am pretty sure that at least one of them was still alive. But in addition to the flies, if you look carefully here you can see that there are springtails there, too. On the lower right corner is a really tiny yellow springtail. Now, knowing that that yellow one is really tiny, imagine how tiny the white one on the fly's wing is! So tiny I didn't see it when I took the picture, and I am not sure I even could have seen it. Also, next to the fly's antennae is another species of springtail. I assume these are baby springtails. Unlike the flies, the springtails were alive, and skating along the water, partly of their own accord, and partly blown by the breeze.

 More winter fireflies

A wasp...

 Fun thing when I was taking pictures of this wasp. First of all, it flattened itself against the ground, which I thought maybe was an attempt to make itself small so I wouldn't see it. But also, I had a photobomber. You can just barely see it here, the blue blur to the left of the wasp's head...

 There it is!

 I think this is another species of springtail. It is so beautiful! Blue and iridescent! Two blue bugs in one day!

The recently-cut tree stump is still oozing sap and attracting bugs (though not every day, for some reason. It oozes sap every day, but I don't always see bugs there. But maybe I am not looking closely enough).

 This was taken just before that ant chased away that fly.

 Another fly

 Another ant

 Bug whose name I can never remember but might be spindle bug, sheltering under the petals of a daffodil.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Back to the puddle on the chair... That spider is about the size of the head of a pin. It was trying to walk on the water, but it wasn't working very well. Mostly the breeze was pushing it around. Impressive, though, to be able to walk on water, but I guess it helps to be tiny.

 Sometimes it would walk on the flies. Here it is on top of a couple of springtails.

Today was a multi-species spider day:

 Species #2

 Species #3, a crab spider.

Zoomed in for a good look at its eyes. Four on the front of its head, the middle two facing forward, and the outer two on a bit of an angle. Then two on top in the middle, and two a little to the side. I don't know if the eyes can move at all, like our eyes move in their sockets. They don't have great vision, basically seeing only light and dark, so maybe it doesn't matter that much. After all, they have 8 of them, maybe that gives them enough coverage that they eyes don't have to move. At any rate, it could definitely see me, so I was surprised that it didn't move at all while I was trying to take its picture.