Harrumph

I had a frustrating day.

The kind of frustrating day where part of the frustration is that you can't do the things you do to make yourself feel better when you have a frustrating day.

Like figuring out during your walk in the woods that the pollen count is so outrageous that you need to go home by the shortest route, and not enjoy the leisurely ramble that you planned. That's the big pond covered in pollen. It was windy today, and I could see the pollen in the air, blowing in the wind, like a river of allergens flowing by. It must have been very frustrating for the spiders.

Well, at least I got a picture of the indigo bunting that kind of shows that it's blue.

And even though I didn't get any good pictures of butterflies, I did have the pleasure of pretty much being followed by pearl crescent butterflies all over my backyard.

Seriously. Everywhere I went, they went. They danced at my feet. They went where I went. They just didn't pose nicely for me.

The bugs were pretty uncooperative, though, and it was really windy, which makes it hard to take pictures of bugs. And don't get my started on the eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies... You might assume that I haven't seen any this year, because there are no pictures of them on the blog. Well, I've seen lots of them. One of them flew circles around me today. And... I don't have any pictures.

I got a lot of pictures that look like this:

That's a caterpillar.

This is the best picture I got of it.

But I also got this stunner of another caterpillar... on the inside of the rain gauge.

Whatever. Here's the Backyard Bugs of the Day:

Leaf beetles. This species is not in any of my books, so I can't be more specific than that. These are really cool beetles, but weird–I was surprised when I first tried looking them up a few years ago to discover that they are beetles, because that's not what they look like. 

Actually, I've always thought they look like juustoleipa, a Finnish cheese.

This is the point where I gave up on trying to take pictures of a couple of bugs that didn't want their picture taken.

Other Bugs:

Planthoppers

Assassin bug

Plume moth

 A longhorn beetle and some other insect on false solomon's seal

Wasp. It was that kind of day. (Although, this one I at least was able to photograph. Not so the one that landed on my shoulder).

Frogs!

Wood frog

American toad

Wood frog

 I confirmed today that at least some of the ripples in the big pond are caused by tadpoles. Due to the time of day, and the resulting angle of the sun, I was able to see what was going on under the surface:

They look kind of like sharks...

But sometimes the ripples are caused by frogs jumping into the water, or poking their heads out:

Ripples

Arachnid Appreciation:

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There were lots of spiders in the backyard today, including a lot of tiny, uncooperative jumping spiders. I don't care, they're cute. This one had something in its mandibles, but I couldn't tell what it was. It may have been prey, but it sort of looked like it was carrying around its own shed skin.

Male (lower left) and female (upper right)

Oh, look! TWO species of uncooperative spiders!

I love the little heart on its head.

I think this is a gravid female jumping spider:

 A big, stupid ant came along and scared her away. I had to kneel down on the ground to take these pictures, which is not easy for me anymore, and the stupid ant scared away my adorable, pregnant spider!

Harrumph.