World of Seasons

According to the analytics of the site that hosts this blog, people from all over the world read about my backyard. They aren't regular readers, I can tell that, but the daily demographics will show readers from about ten different countries every day. It's not the same countries every day, that is how I know that I don't have regular readers from those places. But I was thinking about this today as I walked around my backyard seeing evidence of the advance of the season because at the antipodes of my backyard (well, not quite the antipodes: if you drilled straight through the earth from my backyard you would come up under the ocean, but at the closest point of land to my antipodes), winter is coming. While things are coming alive in the little-over-an-acre area that I write about, it's the middle of autumn in some of the places where people might be reading this. And for some people, there might not be much difference between summer and winter, having mild weather year 'round. But for me, right now I am glorying in the unfurling of tiny, green leaves, and the signs that the world is indeed awake. My part of the world, that is.

Today was exactly the kind of day that I want spring to be: it was warm, it was sunny, and there were bugs everywhere. Once again I was unable to photograph most of them, but it is still a pleasure to see them. Standing in the rock garden I was surrounded by bees; if I closed my eyes I would still have known they were there from the buzzing. And if I looked a little deeper, below the level of the plants, there were ants scurrying underneath. The rock garden right now is like a city; not one of those that never sleeps, but like one of those with a downtown area full of office buildings where there are people hard at work all day, rushing to get things done, and then later, in the evening, they all go home somewhere else to rest. It's competitive, too: the bumblebees especially are very aggressive with the other insects, chasing away other bees, and butterflies.

And speaking of butterflies, today was a 4-species day in my backyard, including one of today's Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 Bee fly. I have only seen a couple of these, ever. They are charming, but they don't sit still for long! As you may guess from the name, it is a fly, but it looks like a bee.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 I think this is either a comma or a question mark butterfly. I have never really been able to tell them apart, and, well, you'll see from the pictures why I have never gotten a good id... It does a very good job of looking like a dried up leaf when its wings are closed.

 As for its wings being open...

 

 It only gives quick glimpses of the dorsal side of its wings.

Backyard Bird of the Day:

 A flock of cedar wax wings came to dine on the berries of a cedar tree.

 

I mentioned seeing four species of butterflies today. There was the comma or question mark above, some spring azures, some cabbage whites, and...

 

 One mourning cloak! It seems every year I see one mourning cloak butterfly in the rock garden, and then it flies away down the driveway. I think in the past it has been more like March when I see them, but I am always happy to see them whenever it is.

In the rock garden were so many bees!

 

 

 An ant carrying an impressively long bit of moss

I have been wondering about the recently hatched caterpillars, because there didn't seem to be anything for them to eat. The tree that they are on has not yet leafed out. But I'm not sure the caterpillars cared, since they mostly seemed to just hang around on their egg mass. But today, they were on the move:

 Their tree is about to get some leaves, and they are all ready to eat them.

Rove beetle with its wings out...

 

 ... and with its wings pulled in... mostly.

 Click beetle.

I found a new-for-me species of spider today for Arachnid Appreciation:
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I haven't seen any snakes for a while, in spite of the nice weather, so I thought that maybe they had moved on from the den where they have been. There wasn't one there when I checked today on my way to get the mail, but later, during my bug walk... Snake of the Day:
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It is about half-way in its hole here. That is how it was when I spotted it, it wasn't one of those cases where I got too close and it fled down the hole. It did continue the rest of the way in, though, as I was watching. Funny thing, though, is that about two minutes before I got this shot, I had walked past that area and looked for the snake and I didn't see one. So either it wasn't there before, or it was hiding well among the leaf litter and I didn't see it.

At the end of my bug walk I went back to see if it had come out again, and it had, but was in the same position of being half-way down the hole. When I arrived it quickly zipped all the way down, but being an optimist, I waited to see if it would come back up. And it did... a little bit. Can you spot it?

It just poked its head out. It stayed like that for about a minute, but when I leaned in to get a closer picture it disappeared, and in spite of my optimistic waiting, did not come back out while I was there.