Dirt

We have a big pile of dirt in our backyard, from around the time we bought the land and then built a house on it, and we use dirt from there when we are doing various landscaping things in the backyard. Today we were building a new raised garden bed, and it's a high bed, which we don't want to fill entirely with expensive gardening dirt, so the bottom part we are filling from the big pile of dirt (which is topsoil). As I was raking out each wheelbarrowful of dirt in the raised bed I saw a few bugs, beetles, mostly. The first one I saw I carefully lifted out of the dirt and set outside the box, because I didn't want it to get buried under later loads of dirt. Then when I saw the next one it occurred to me that it was silly for me to move them so they would not get buried in dirt–the reason they were there was because they had already been buried in the dirt pile. This was obviously their habitat, and it was silly for me to worry about them being covered in dirt.

But then, I saw the Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is a new species of bee for me, I think, but today was not the first time I saw it; I first spotted one a couple of days ago, but I was unable to get a picture of it then. I was surprised to see it crawling in the dirt I was raking. I didn't know if it had been in the load of dirt, and that meant it had been burrowed in the dirt pile, or did it just land there when I wasn't looking. There are species of bees that live in burrows in the ground, some communally, and some solitary. But I didn't know if that was the case here. Had we just destroyed this bee's burrow, and possibly its larva/larvae? I felt bad about that possibility. And I just didn't want to dump dirt on top of it. So, I picked it up (I had gloves on, and it very willingly climbed onto my glove) and moved it to another garden bed. I don't know what it did after that. I hope I didn't destroy its young.

I did accidentally harm another bug with my backyard projects today:

 This sharpshooter was on a piece of metal I was spraying with a rust sealant, and I didn't see it until I had shot it pretty thoroughly with the spray. It was still moving afterward, crawling around on the metal, so I know I didn't kill it, but I don't think it can be good for it in the long run. Ironically, shellac is made from insect secretions, but this sealing coat isn't exactly made for them. And it brings to mind that scene with the insects and the paint in James and the Giant Peach...

As expected, there are a few more things blooming in the backyard since I did my floral inventory a few days ago:

My husband was more considerate of the bugs today:

 The caterpillar from yesterday was still in the same spot, still twitching, and when he was doing the trimming on the lawn with the weed whacker he was careful to go around it.

I didn't do my bug walk until early evening, and it was pretty unsuccessful. It was overcast most of the day, the kind of day where you can't really guess what time it is because all day looks like evening, but I don't know if that had anything to do with why I couldn't find any bugs. Maybe.

 Another larger springtail. This is the third pattern (or lack thereof, in this case) that I have found in these lately.

 Click beetles can look so dramatic.

The robins on the front porch look like they will be ready to fledge very soon.

 Sorry I haven't posted other, and better, pictures of them this time around; the Mama and Papa birds didn't allow it.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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