Mowing

Today I mowed the lawn for the first time this year. It probably didn't really need it yet, but it was getting pretty shaggy in a few spots (particularly under the lawn furniture, for some reason), so I figured I might as well do it. I don't have a lot of lawn for the size of my yard, because I let most of it grow wild, and so I mostly just mow paths between areas that are meant to be full of wildflowers. It's a good environment for wildlife - and bugs. Ever since I got my macro lens it takes me about twice as long to mow the lawn because I keep stopping to take pictures of things that I see while I am mowing. Like bugs.

And mushrooms.

Is it weird to have a favorite fungus? Because I have a favorite fungus.

It's called cedar apple rust. It doesn't look like much here, but it's awesome when it's wet. I am kind of surprised it's all dried up, given how much rain we had the other day. Well, next time it rains I'll get another picture of it.

I found quite a few cool bugs today. Also some toads (YAY! I have already seen more toads this year than I did all of last year, which is a good sign) and some snakes. I will post pictures of the snakes and spiders for the day at the end, so you can skip scrolling to the end if you are squeamish about them.

First, Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think it's a cranefly? At any rate, she was flitting all over, laying eggs in the ground. Very cool to watch (but hard to photograph... I know, I say that a lot... It took me about 50 shots to get these three!). She laid a lot of eggs.

 A few other cool bugs, too:

 Another really, really tiny bug. It looks blue, but when I zoomed in close to look at it on the computer, it's really striped of blue and green:

 In the closer picture of this one you can see a lot of smaller bugs on its back. I don't know if it's covered with parasites, or if those are its young that it is carting around on its back. The latter would be cute, but there's something so funny about bugs with bugs...

Ants don't get a lot of BBotD love, because they are commonplace, there are so many of them, and yet it's hard to tell if I've taken pics of a particular species or not, they invade my house every summer, and they just don't sit still to have their picture taken. I thought these looked cool, though. They communicate by touching antennae, I think.

I found today's Backyard Bud of the Day in the middle of the lawn. Its flowers were so tiny I could not tell they really were flowers until I leaned down to get a closer look. I mowed around it.

Okay, now we get to the creepy crawlies. If you have either arachnophobia or herpetophobia (I am just guessing that is the name for a fear of snakes?), stop now. But really, this snake is so cute, you should keep going. Except the spiders are going to come first, and they are not the cute kind of spiders. They're not bad, really, but they're not the adorable ones with the (8) soulful eyes.

Still here?

I'll start with some arachnid appreciation. Here's the spiders...

I tried to get another angle on this second one, but it started crawling toward my hand, so I decided this was enough.




Now for the snake. I don't see snakes often, and today I actually saw three - I know it was three different ones, because the sizes and colors were a different, but I think they were all the same species. I think they are ribbon snakes, which I think are a kind of garter snake (you see how confident I am in my herpetological knowledge?). I only got pictures of one of them, though, because the other two bolted when they saw me. I tried not to take it personally.

Isn't it cute? Obviously the macro lens is not ideal for taking pictures of snakes, but sometimes you work with what's on the camera.

Life is beautiful, don't you think?

Nothing Profound

If I could write this blog while I am walking around the backyard with my camera I would probably have a lot more to say about things, but in the end, I don't think I have any very profound thoughts. Every day I pore over the same tiny patch of the world and just marvel at how beautiful it is. I don't have a grand view of mountains, or an ocean, or very much at all, but on the small scale, my landscape is pretty spectacular. Even though right now it is pretty muddy.

That being said, here's today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

They are tiny (maybe a little more than 1/4 inch?), kind of like a bee, kind of like an ant, probably some kind of fly, and they were doing a little wing waving, butt wiggling dance when I first saw them (as you can see in the first picture, there were two of them, so maybe that was a mating dance?). Anyway, didn't get any great pics, because they wouldn't sit still, but I think you get the gist of how cute it was.

By the way, I think that is a shriveled up potato they are dancing on in the first picture.

My neighbor has a tree that is coming to the end of its bloom, and the petals are wafting everywhere. It's lovely...

Yesterday when I posted that picture of that really, really tiny bug I noticed what I had not noticed when I actually took the picture, which is that the lichen (or whatever it is) on the tree looks really cool when you look at it close up, so I decided that today the lichen deserves a picture of its own:

Then, while I was taking pictures of the lichen, I saw another really, really tiny bug crawling around. It's a different kind than the one yesterday, but it has eight legs, so it's an arachnid. It also moved surprisingly fast, so I didn't get a good shot at it (noticing a theme here?), but here it is...

Though looking at these pictures now, I am not 100% certain they are both of the same bug...
The picture does not give you any sense at all of how small these are. In real life they are about the size of this: .

Today's Backyard Bud of the Day is something most people consider a weed, but I love as a wildflower. I actually ate some for the first time last week. People rave about dandelion greens, but I don't see what the fuss is. They just taste like leaves. They are supposed to be good for you, though... However, you are supposed to pick them before the plant flowers, so I guess it's too late for any more this year.

Now, just because I like the look of it, a bee on bluets:

And one last thing. I think this feather has been sitting in this exact same spot since last autumn...

Speaking of things remaining where they are, the vernal pool lingered today. The ground is really saturated, which makes for some muckiness, but it's nice to have my little pond for another day.

Edit: Oops, almost forgot this one. I swear, I do not have a prurient interest in bugs, but this was just too cool a shot to not take it. These bugs were on the skylight in my bathroom. I had to climb up on the sink and stand with my feet on about a 3 inch wide strip of countertop between the sink and the edge to get this picture. It was awkward, but worth it (since, after all, I didn't fall).

Spring

I took a lot of pictures today.

Starting so early in the spring that it is probably still winter, I go outside almost every day to walk around my yard and see what's there. I am looking for bugs (and not expecting to find any at first), but also looking to see what's changing, what's growing, what's new. The reason I don't spend much time in the yard in the winter is not that it's too cold, but that it's not interesting; nothing changes in the winter, it's all in stasis. It waits, and so I wait, and I get so excited when I start to see signs that spring is coming.

Spring is my favorite season for a number of reasons, which I am not going enumerate. If you love spring, you already know why. I will say that I love the constant changes, though, and the surprises, where something is growing or blooming suddenly where you didn't notice before that something was coming.

I call my daily walks Bug Walks, because I am out there looking for the BBotD, but there's always something else to see. Today I got to see my vernal pool. I know it's probably not what would really be considered a vernal pool, but it's a big puddle we get way in the back of the yard when we get a lot of rain (like the 3 and a bit inches we got yesterday). It'll be gone tomorrow or the next day, but when it's there I can feel like I have a pond on my property. It's not there long enough for frogs to lay eggs in or anything, which is too bad.

I took two bug walks today, because a few hours after my first one the sun came out, which improved photo conditions, and also seems to coax out more bugs. As I mentioned, I took a lot of pictures today - because I saw a lot of bugs. I am not going to share them all, but I'll give you a few. I am not always sure which bugs to share; if I don't share it, and I never see it again to get another pic, no one will see it. But if I share everything, I might not find anything for the next week...

Backyard Bug of the Day is more complicated than you think...

Anyway, here's today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

And here's a different wasp, which I am including because you don't usually get this view of a wasp... and maybe you don't want it...

Now for another picture of yesterday's BBotD. I think they are sawfly larvae, even though they don't do the ninja thing (more on that another day). From these pics you can see that they definitely ARE eating the needles on the bush, and also, which they weren't doing yesterday, the way they kind of pile on each other.

Buds are popping out all over, so it's getting hard to choose every day, but here's some buds - leaves, I think - from a tree I cannot identify:

And now... have I overloaded you yet, because there's a bit more to come - a couple of trees in flower:

I had a very pleasant surprise today when I saw my first toad of the spring! I was very happy to see it - and not just because I almost put my monopod right on top of it. Last year I think I only saw two frogs/toads the entire year, and I was concerned about that, so it was great to see one so early in the year. So here you go, Backyard Amphibian of the Day!

It had some weird, bright green blotches on it, like someone spilled paint on it. Don't know what that's all about.

Okay, here's just a bunch or random bugs, because I have no segue, and I was happy to find so many today (and this isn't even all of them!)...

This one was so, so, so tiny I didn't even see it until I looked through my camera.

And now for the final natural beauty of the day, an arachnid appreciation post. If you don't like spiders, scroll no further...
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