Mistaken Identity

 Well, I didn't expect to be posting again today, but here I am. Today was not as satisfyingly buggy as yesterday was, and as a photographer of insects it was quite frustrating (Yesterday I took over 300 pictures; today I took about a tenth of that). I saw my first butterfly of the year, it fluttered right past me, but I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it. I didn't even get to see what it was, although I could tell that it was not a mourning cloak, which surprised me, because my first butterfly of the year is usually a mourning cloak, and usually around this time.

Anyway, I only have one bug to share with you today...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I don't know what kind this is, and I am too lazy to look it up, in part because it was incredibly small, so it was probably an early instar, which means it might be harder to identify; sometimes caterpillars look very different in their early instars than they do when they are more mature, and my caterpillar guide usually only shows what they look like in the later instars. This one was so small that before I looked at it through my camera lens and saw it magnified, I though it was some kind of leafhopper. Although, I suppose if you don't know what size leafhoppers tend to be, that probably means nothing to you.

I was on the lookout for frogs in the stream and ponds today, and was finally rewarded by finding this one in the small pond, which is still overflowing its usual banks:

As you can see, it was pretty mellow, and allowed me a nice, close look. Actually, if you look really closely you can see me and my camera reflected in its eye. I wonder, though, if it was so chill because it was literally chilled–frogs are cold-blooded, and though it was pretty warm today, the water was still rather cold. It may not have been warm enough to move. Well, it could probably move, but it may have been feeling rather sluggish. It certainly made no effort to catch any of the water striders that were skating on the pond (still too far for me to get a good photo).