Half Mile Hike For A Picture Of Bugs

I went to the woods to work today, but when I found some cool bugs I decided that I needed to go get my camera for some pictures. In a different way than the reliable spider the other day I was sure that the bugs would still be there when I got back after walking about a half mile round-trip. There were a lot of them, and they were feeding on a pretty abundant food source, so I was confident that the feeding frenzy would still be going on when I got back. And it was.

Backyard Bugs of the Day:

Rove beetles

I can find a dozen in this shot. This is the same patch of mushrooms from yesterday's post. I didn't notice any insects on them yesterday, but today there was quite a crowd of rove beetles.

Okay, I wrote down the file numbers of pictures to upload, and I thought I would remember what the different categories were, but I can't, so let's just see what comes up...

Ah, the trio of deer...

I scared the deer trio again today, and as often happens they ran off in the same direction I was going. Usually this makes them run again, but today they just stood and watched. I stopped and took some pictures, and then turned away from them and kept walking...

Then, while I was taking pictures of the Backyard Bugs of the Day I noticed that at least one of the deer had followed me a bit, coming toward me (though staying at quite a distance), and watching me. I know that animals don't think in the same ways we do, with words, but I do wish I could understand what was going through this deer's mind.

I briefly considered doing a bug walk this morning after taking a picture of a spider (which is at the bottom of the post, of course), but I decided I didn't want to be outside listening to chainsaws, and I had things I needed to get done (which, to be honest, I didn't). But I did manage this shot:

Sweat bee and ant on aster. There are more ants on the flower, but they are on the underside of it at the point that I took this picture.

When we came back from working in the woods my husband discovered that he had a hitchhiker on his hat:

Looper

 

Mushrooms:

Arachnid Appreciation:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

This spider lives in the package bin, and when I checked for packages today (I didn't get any) I saw that it had some kind of prey, so I went inside to get my camera, and it looks like its prey is another spider.