It's the Small Things

To a certain extent I feel like there is a dreary sameness to my bug searches lately; it's always the same bugs, and since spring hasn't really progressed at all, there's never anything new. But every once in a while I find something that is not the usual, and it buoys me up for the rest of the walk. It doesn't even have to be something amazing or even a new species, it just has to be something that I haven't been seeing every day.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Can you find it? The only reason I saw it was because I saw it fly over to the rock and land on it. And even then I couldn't figure out where it landed until it flew up and landed again.

Moth. That's the first moth I have seen in quite a while.

There were very few other bugs around today. After all those flies I saw yesterday, there were only a couple today. There were fewer winter fireflies. There were even fewer ants eating the tree sap, though as you will see in a moment, there were still some to be found. It was only a couple degrees colder today than the last couple of days, but it was really cloudy by afternoon when I went out looking for bugs.

 Birch catkin bug on a pine sapling

 There were still some ants around.

Arachnid Appreciation;
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There was no snake for the last couple of days, even though it was warmer the last two, but it was back today:
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 I took these with the telephoto lens, not the macro lens, so I wasn't really that close.

 I took an unintentional self-portrait–I am reflected in the snake's eye.