The Bugs in the Backyard: Premonition of a Beetle

Today when I started out on my walk with my camera I thought to myself, "Today is the day I am finally going to get a good picture of a six-spotted tiger beetle."

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

I don't know how I knew, but I knew.

I saw a couple of them on my walk, and when I first saw this one, I didn't even get a shot of it. But the thing about six-spotted tiger beetles is that they are territorial, so they may fly away, but they will usually come back. When it came back, I took my usual distant shot, just to be sure I got a picture to record that I saw it...

... then I moved closer...

... and closer...

Check out those mandibles! I have heard that these have a painful bite, so I am always careful when I am taking close-ups of them. Not that I get to do that very often–usually I can't get closer to a six-spotted tiger beetle than about 5 feet. Anyway, it flew off at this point...

... and landed on another rock nearby–obviously this one's territory includes TWO big rocks.

I started the move-in-slowly process over again...

And it worked again!

Boy, did it ever work! This was the most cooperative six-spotted tiger beetle I have ever seen!

What a beauty. These might be my favorite insects. I love their colors, and their belligerent personalities.

The rest of the insects I saw today were not so cooperative. The number of bugs I saw and didn't get a chance to get even one shot of was astronomical. After all those crane flies I photographed the other day, today I saw just as many, if not more, and I think I only got pictures of two. I saw a lovely damselfly–it landed right next to the tiger beetle when I first saw it–and it did not let me take any pictures. I saw loads of bees and flies, and nothing wanted to sit for a picture.

I did, however, get a decent shot of Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

I don't know what kind of butterfly this is. I barely got a glimpse of the other side of its wings, not even good enough to tell if they were blue or gray. It's quite tiny, and a speedy flyer.

Other Bugs:

Gnats on wild strawberry

I don't know what kind of flies these are, but there will soon be more of them.

This is one of the better pictures I took today, which tells you something about how my day of photographing insects went:

Wasp

Click beetle

Winter firefly

Fungus beetle on the weird fungus (slime mold?)

A swarm of crane flies:

And the one cooperative crane fly I saw today:

Although, honestly, it wasn't really cooperative at all.

There are flowers more flowers blooming in the woods:

I think this is solomon's seal, but it could be something else that I always think is solomon's seal, but isn't. I don't think it's false solomon's seal, ironically.

Jack-in-the-pulpit

I don't know what these are. I should, because I have looked them up, but I don't remember.

Violets

We still have the whirlpool in the stream:

Frogs have been scarce the last few days, but this one really likes sitting on the edge of the bathtub:

Backyard Bird of the Day:

I think this might be a blue-winged warbler.

I didn't bring my camera on my walk yesterday, because it was raining when we started out, so I didn't have my camera with me when we saw something really exciting in our backyard, a new mammal we have never seen before ever, much less in our backyard. However, I had my phone, so I did have A camera. Fortunately, this animal was curious and cooperative, and was as interested in looking at us as we were in looking at it, and I was able to get much closer than I ever would have expected.

Backyard Mammal of the Day from Yesterday:

This is a weasel, either a short-tailed weasel (also called a stoat in the summer and an ermine in the winter, when its coat is all white) or a long-tailed weasel. Apparently they are so similar you need a DNA test to tell them apart. I think this one was a young one, although I don't know how big they get, it seemed small to me. Also, its curiosity of us and lack of shyness was a lot like I have observed in other young mammals.

When we spotted it, and it spotted us, instead of immediately disappearing into its burrow it came farther out to have a better look at us.

Eventually it did turn around and disappear in a hole under this rock. It was a thrill to see this; seeing new things living in our surrounds is always exciting. That this is living so close to my house and we never saw one before is incredible.