Spring Arrived While I Wasn't Watching

 I went away for a few days, and spring progressed a little bit in my backyard while I was gone.

By backyard in this case I mean my woods. I am nor sure what those yellow flowers are, but there are a few trees in bloom with these tiny blossoms. The white flower is a wood anemone.

I missed my woods while I was gone, but I got to visit a national park, and see a waterfall, and, oh, I got to see this:

Total eclipse of the sun as seen from Portage Lakes Ohio, April 8, 2024. I've never seen that from my backyard, but I looked it up and there will be a total eclipse of the sun visible from Connecticut coming up in... 55 years. I will have to live to 111 years old to see it. I wonder what my backyard and my woods will be like then...

Anyway, today I went for two walks, the first a short one, with company, and my telephoto lens on my camera, and the second a wonderfully long one, with my macro lens on my camera. I saw a lot of bugs on that first, short walk, and decided today would be a good day to take the macro lens for a walk. In spite of the forecast for rain it was a gorgeous day, sunny and warm, and the bugs were out in multitudes. I had an interesting and gratifying walk, albeit also an incredibly frustrating one. I saw A LOT of bugs. But I also had swarms of gnats and flies BUGGING me, flying around my face, which is extremely annoying. And most of the bugs I saw were uninterested in having their picture taken. I saw some cool things I was unable to photograph, like a tiny, green beetle that I am pretty sure I have never seen before, which flew off before I could get close enough to even look at it, much less take a picture. Also several species of butterflies...

This is either a comma or a question mark butterfly. I didn't get a good look at it. This was taken with my telephoto on my first walk.

Finally today I saw my first mourning cloak butterfly of the season. And my second; I didn't get a picture of the first. This is as close as I could get; it's too bad I had switched to my macro lens on this walk, or I could have gotten a closer shot with my telephoto. Ah, well, there were benefits to having the macro, as you will shortly see. I saw a couple of other butterflies, too–a couple of spring azures, and a couple that I didn't get a good enough look at to identify. I love seeing butterflies in the woods. Or anywhere.

Since I had my camera with me I decided to have a look at the bathtub ecosystem today. I recently cleaned some of the fall leaves out of the bathtub, but there are still leaves and mud in there, and there are some kinds of algae growing... but perhaps I should explain about the bathtub. Our woods used to be a farm, and back when they had cows there they placed a bathtub in the woods with a pipe that channels water from what I guess is a spring–water that flows out of the rocks on the cliff. The pipe fills the tub, which was at that time a drinking trough for the cows, and because it is on a slope, when the water overflows it trickles out of the tub, and that is partly what fills the small pond. Only a tiny bit, though, because not much water flows into or out of the bathtub. Anyway, as with any reservoir of water in the wild, things live in it. I went to look at it in expectation of seeing copepods, springtails, and probably mosquito larvae. I did not expect to see this:

I know ants can swim, but I have never seen them walk on the surface of water before. I see spiders do it a lot, and obviously water striders, but never ants.

I don't know if the algae and whatever other goop is in the water makes it easier for them to walk on it, but you can see the dent the ant on the left is making in the surface tension.

It's pretty common to see springtails on water.

I didn't see anything swimming underwater, but there was a lot going on on the surface; those ants, the springtail, and this:

I have seen things online about making a bee bath, which is a dish of marbles with water in it, which allows the bees to drink without falling in and drowning. I think this bee had landed on this floating, rotting leaf, and fell in...

I rescued it after this with another leaf. I set it on the dry edge of the bathtub. It never even said thank you.

Also found on the water in the bathtub was Backyard Bug of the Day:

I spotted this weevil walking around on some floating leaves. At first it seemed to be drinking...

Then it seemed to be trying to grab something floating in the water, some kind of debris...

It caught it, but didn't do anything with it...

And then it shocked me by crawling underwater!

It crawled back up on top of the leaf again, and I have no idea why it did that.

The thing it was interested in appears to be the exuvia of some kind of aquatic larva. I hate to say it might be a mosquito. With all of the rain we have had this spring we could be in for a terrible onslaught of mosquitoes this year. I saw larvae in the small pond a couple of weeks ago...

Let's see, what else I did find in the woods today...

All the rain this winter and so far this spring has meant lots of mud, which has meant animal footprints let me know what's walking around in my woods. I think this is an opossum's footprints.

I had no idea what kind of skull this is.

I walked over to the swamp (which I am not sure is technically a swamp, but we call it that) and was happy to see salamander egg masses there. I saw them there a couple of years ago, but I didn't see any the last couple of years.

Salamanders attach their egg masses to vegetation, and this one unfortunately was attached to a tiny sapling that is now above water–it hasn't rained in a few days and the water level has dropped.

I removed it from the sapling and moved it into deeper water... after taking a couple of close-up pictures of it. I nearly fell face first into the mud taking these.

 Then I checked on the egg masses in the large pond. They are hard to see...

In spite of the reflections on the pond, I was able to spot some of them. I can't look closely, though. I need some hip waders.

I saw quite a few frogs in the stream today. Most of them jumped in the water immediately when I arrived. This one let me get a picture before it swam off. Another one saw me and immediately buried itself in the mud. I wish I had been able to get a video of that, but it happened much too fast! Within two seconds it had disappeared, before I could even think of getting out my phone.

This one was a bit less shy, but it too eventually jumped into the water.

These two obviously felt safe on their island of mud, and just sat there, unconcerned about me and my camera on the bank of the stream.

After my walk in the woods I went to see how much was going on in the rock garden in front of my house, because there is a profusion of purple flowers there, perfect for bees...

I saw three bumblebees (or carpenter bees?), which made me happy, but not completely because there should have been more. It was a gorgeous, warm day, with thousands of blooms, there should have been dozens of bees, multiple species, and some butterflies, and flies... But I was happy to see bees.

Actually, I saw a lot of bees in the woods, but they were flitting among the leaf litter, and not disposed to pose for me. Anyway...

Cleaning its tongue.

 Ah, spring...

False hellebore. I don't like when plants are given a name like False hellebore. It makes it sound like the plants are deceitful. It's not their fault that someone mistaked them for hellebore at some point.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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I haven't seen many spiders in the leaf litter this spring, which has been concerning, so I was happy to spot this one, even if it was not happy to have me trying to take its picture.

Jumping spider:

Bowl and doily spider: