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The forecast for this morning included a possibility of snow. I was a bit incredulous when I read that, but it's April in Connecticut, almost anything can happen with the weather. As it turn out, there was no snow, it was a pretty sunny afternoon, and the high temperature was in the 60s. Nice for me and the bugs.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Some kind of leaf hopper nymph. This picture does not adequately express how small this is. It is small enough that I had to look at it through the camera to see for sure that it was a bug, and not just a speck on an unfurling leaf.

Today there were two popular flowers in the backyard. #1: Leafy Spurge:

 This flower attracted several Orders of insects today. Hymenoptera (in this case, an ant)

 

 Coleoptera (beetle)

 

 I am not sure if this a gnat (tiny Diptera) or a tiny wasp (Hymenoptera).

 Where there are lots of bugs feeding on a plant is a good place for a predatory bug to hunt. Thus we find an assassin but feeding on a sweat bee on the leafy spurge. Orders Hemiptera and Hymenoptera

Attractive plant #2 was, again, the dandelion:

 Sweat bee and...

 A gnat, and two springtails.

 Sweat bee

Gnats. There were SO MANY gnats out today. I would like to make a disclaimer: I don't like all bugs. I don't mind gnats on a dandelion. I don't like gnats flying around my head.

 

 Even when I am not trying to take a picture of a bug, I end up with a picture of a bug. Can you see the candy striped leaf hopper on the flowering crabapple?

One lone bee finding nectar in flowering crab apple flowers. This tree isn't really blooming yet.

I came across this scenario twice today, with different species of ants:

 

  I don't know what this behavior is all about. Two ants with their mandibles locked together; I can never tell if one is pushing the other, or one is pulling the other.

 

 Different, much smaller species

 It's difficult when the flowers in trees are so far above my head.

 Hover fly

 This tree is oozing huge amounts of sap, in which some kind of fungusy goo appears to be growing. It attracted a lot of little flies, two species of which you can see here.

 Not mating, but I suspect that is a male who hopes to have the female (larger one, giving the piggyback) as his mate.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Spider on a broken flowerpot