The Bugs in the Backyard: Rain and Leaves

The last two days have brought rain and the emergence of leaves:

The rain we need, and the leaves... well, I need them.

About that rain...

In the back corner of my backyard there is an area that gets very puddly in the springtime, when the snow melts and we get a lot of rain. I call it my vernal pool. A vernal pool is basically a temporary pond that is only there in the spring (after snow melts and there is a lot of rain). They are habitat for insects and amphibians that need water to produce their young, but don't need to live in water all the time. Mine isn't really a vernal pool, just a puddly area–I don't think it stays wet there long enough for anything to lay eggs in it and for them to hatch. But for the last couple of years it hasn't appeared at all. We have had a couple of not-wet springs, and winter or 2016 brought very little snow. So I was very happy today to see that my vernal pool is back; we had hardly any snow this winter, but we've had some decent rain lately. The pool is not as big as it usually gets (this doesn't show the whole thing, but right now it is about 6 feet by 4 feet), but I am happy that it is here.

And while we're on the topic of Things That Appear When It Rains:

The cedar apple rust fungus has been... activated. So, here you see it in all of its alien glory.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I don't know what this is. I thought at first it might be a thrips, but now I don't think so. It is very, very small.

It was pretty fast for such a tiny thing, too. When I first spotted it, it was flexing its wings like it was sending semaphore messages, and then it started marching down the garden fence.

Back on the subject of rain...

When I went to check the rain gauge (A little over 2 inches!) I found this ichneumon wasp sitting on it, so I decided to leave the wasp alone and not empty the rain.

Other bugs:

This is possibly the best picture I have ever taken of a stilt legged bug.

First assassin bug of the season. Immature.

I think this is a kid of hopper, but I don't see them hop, I only see them fly. It is miniscule. I see tiny, white specks flying sometimes, and when they land, if they let you get close enough, this is what you see. But they hardly ever sit still long enough to get a good look.

Gnat

I saw a LOT of spiders today. Some were jumping spiders, which are ambushers, and don't build a web to catch prey, but most of them were web builders. It rained for most of the day, or misted at least, and I spent the day waiting for the rain to stop (as forecast) so I could go out to look for bugs. I think that the web builders came out when the rain stopped to build new webs, because that is what several of them were doing when I saw them. And none of the finished webs had rain on them, so they must all have been built after it stopped. And now, Arachnid Appreciation:
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This spider was on the porch light last night at around 4:30 a.m. Don't ask why I was out on my porch at 4:30 a.m. Note that there are tiny droplets of rain on the spider, even though it was sheltered by the porch (it had a web thread leading from the porch light to the grapevine wreath that is on the wall).