Beauty In the Eye of the Beholder

I was musing on the idea of beauty as I did my bug walk today, because I had just been looking at a pair of flies with iridescent wings that I thought were beautiful. And I realized that many people - myself included, in the past, would have seen the two bugs on a leaf and thought they were gross, icky, creepy, disgusting, ugly, nasty... and without ever really looking at them. Just the sight of a bug, and people will say "ew." But in really looking at bugs, I have discovered that some of them are beautiful, and that the lovely details of them, if people could get past the initial reaction that it is a bug, so it must be gross, would be captivating to most everyone.Sure, maybe you find the compound eyes creepy, or are unnerved by the six legs, or an irrational worry that any insect you see is going to bite or sting you, and kill you with venom or disease, but at least notice that the wings are beautiful.

Unfortunately, the pictures I took don't do them justice, but you get a hint of the beauty from the female's wings (the one on the right):

While you are feasting your eyes on their loveliness, notice the sexual dimorphism, where the female is bigger, but has a smaller head and eyes, and the male has huge eyes, but a smaller body.

So after spending my time thinking about the beauty of bugs and the natural world, and wishing that more people would be aware of it, I came across one of the most beautiful bugs I have ever seen.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

  A tiny, blue bee. It looks a bit like a cuckoo wasp, but I have never seen one this color, and it was a lot smaller, and the texture of it is different. Unfortunately, I was not on my A-game photography-wise today, so I only got bad pictures that don't fully demonstrate the beauty of this insect. (It was also EXTREMELY windy, which did not help. The kind of wind where you brace yourself against the gusts so you don't get blown over). This picture was taken in the shade, with the ring flash on the camera providing the light source, and you can see it is a gorgeous blue. But in the sun...

 So many shades of blue and purple iridescence become visible.

 I will forever regret that I didn't get a good picture of this one.

 Here's another tiny bee (I think) that I photographed badly, but this one really was the fault of the wind. This one is shaded, with the flash for illumination...

 ... and here's some sunny ones.

 This bee was the size of a gnat. I thought it was a gnat. And maybe it is, but up close it does look more like a bee.

I found a pretty nice variety of bugs today, for the season, and the chilliness of the last two days, and coldness of the nights. Random Bugs:

I found this caterpillar the other day, and it has not moved from this spot (or has returned to it continually) for three day. But now I can tell that the front is at the top.

About four inches above it on the same tree trunk, in another crack in the bark was another caterpillar. This one is facing downward.

You can't see the bug, but it's there in under the bubbles. Years ago I would see this foamy stuff on plant stems and assumed it was insect eggs of some kind, but now I know that it is a bubbly foam that spittle bugs make to hide in. Which is weird, because it actually makes them pretty obvious - you can't see the bug, but you know where it is hiding because the thing it is hiding under is so obvious. It's like if you were playing hide and seek and decided to stand in the middle of the room under a florescent blanket.

Speaking of creepy insect eyes, I think these eyes are beautiful, and not creepy at all.

I took this picture to show that the Canada mayflowers are blooming (though not in great numbers), but can you see the bug that I didn't notice when I was taking the picture?

Nymph climbing a tree trunk

Looper caterpillar

I don't know what this is; it looks a bit like a springtail, but not really. It's quite striking, though - it almost was chosen as BBotD, but then I found the blue bee, and a blue bee is obviously going to win that contest.

I don't see the "spring" underneath, so I don't think this is a springtail. Of course, I could just not be seeing it.

Weevil

I don't usually post pictures of dead bugs, but I was a bit intrigued by this one that appears to have been caught head-first in a tiny spiderweb.

Speaking of which, I found another reptile today, which will be at the end of the blog. But first, Arachnid Appreciation:
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Not very cooperative...

Photobombed

This is the same kind of spider as above, found on another plant about two feet away. Note that this one is missing two of its legs.

That looks painful.

Backyard Reptile of the Day:
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I found another ribbon snake/garter snake (still don't know if those are the same thing) today. This is the fourth one I have seen in the backyard in the last couple of weeks - I am relatively certain that at least three of those are separate individuals, but the fourth of the 3 might be a case of me seeing the same snake twice. Anyway, I don't usually have 4 snake sightings in a whole year, so 4 in a couple of weeks is pretty surprising.

Also surprising is that this one wasn't very afraid of me. I approach snake photography similarly to the way I approach but photography, taking a picture at a distance to make sure I get one before it gets scared, and then trying to get progressively closer...

This one let me get very close before it was scared away, and then it was only because I tried to walk in front of it to get a different angle and I bumped the stick it was resting on. Remember that these pictures were taken with the macro lens, which means I was only a couple of inches away from the snake when I took this.