Homecoming

 I have been away for almost two weeks, and missing my backyard. When I travel I sometimes wonder what's going on in my backyard. What is blooming? How much rain have we had? Are there any monarch caterpillars on my milkweed plants? What am I missing by being away?

Usually when we travel we get home late at night, but this trip worked out differently, so to my great satisfaction we were able to go for a walk in the woods when we got home. And on that walk I found a cool bug.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I think this is a root borer beetle. It is, by local standards, a really big beetle.  I wish I had had my camera with me, although I am not sure it would have been cooperative about it.

I had my husband put his finger next to the beetle for a size reference, and the beetle didn't like that, and took off running. It was pretty fast.

As an added bit of perspective, this tiny wood frog is less than half the size of the beetle. We saw at least a dozen tiny frogs on our walk, from at least two different species. This is the only one I was able to photograph. They leap impressive distances.  

To answer one of the questions above, by the way, I looked for monarch caterpillars on my milkweed plants and didn't find any. Alas.