Goin' To The Well -- Fort Collins, Colorado
"Enjoy the satisfaction that comes from doing little things well."
-- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

A honeybee investigates the depths of a giant Eye Candy Hibiscus flower in the CSU Annual Trial Garden in Fort Collins...

When Flowers Dance -- Fort Collins, Colorado
“She is magic! But she does not know it!
When she laughs the world stops for a while...”
― Avijeet Das

A Painted Lady butterfly sips nectar in a flower garden on a warm spring day in northern Colorado...

Breakfast At Tiffany's -- Fort Collins, Colorado
“Even though the bee is small, there she is on the flower, doing something of value. And the value she creates there contributes to a larger ecosystem of value, in that mountain meadow, in that range of mountains, in the world and even the universe. And can’t you just feel how happy she is?”
-- Jay Ebben

A tiny bee, maybe a type of carpenter bee or sweat be (?), gathers pollen from the flower of a Morning Glory plant. If you look closely at the full-size version of this, you can see the individual grains of white pollen that have stuck to the bee's legs - they look like tiny jewels. :)

Gotta Have Flair -- Fort Collins, Colorado
"Personality is essential. It is in every work of art. When someone walks on stage for a performance and has charisma, everyone is convinced that he has personality."
-- Lukas Foss

This fancy fellow is a Dogwood Clearwing Borer Moth. I found him sipping nectar from one of the yarrow plants in my backyard a couple of weeks ago. It actually looks like he has tail feathers.

UPDATE: Thanks to +Seth Burgess for the identification!

From the Missouri Botanical Garden website:

"The dogwood borer, Synanthedon scitula, one of about seven borers that attack dogwoods, is the most serious. It also attacks flowering cherry, chestnut, apple, mountain-ash, hickory, pecan, willow, birch, bayberry, oak, hazel, myrtle, and loquat. Wounded trees are the most vulnerable since the larvae must gain access to the tree through wounds or scars. The adult is a clear wing moth which looks like a wasp."

Hangin' In -- Fort Collins, Colorado
“Sometimes life gets weird. Hang in there, it gets better.”
― Tanner Patrick

A large wolf spider ( Lycosidae ) suns himself in the early morning light on the leaf of a Lamb's Ear plant...

#SpiderSunday

Small Matters -- Rawah Wilderness, Colorado
"Notice the small things. The rewards are inversely proportional."
-- Liz Vassey

A chipmunk pauses to give me a wary but curious glance as I take his portrait, deep in the forest of the Rawah Wilderness in Colorado...

Symbiosis -- Fort Collins, Colorado
"For bees, the flower is the fountain of life;
For flowers, the bee is the messenger of love."
-- Kahlil Gibran

A young honeybee gathers nectar and pollen from a flower in the late afternoon sun in northern Colorado...

Jumping Spider ( Salticidae )
This tiny little fellow was playing hide-and-seek with my camera lens on a Sedum plant. I'd move my lens a little closer and he'd instantly disappear behind the leaf, but then just a few seconds later he'd tentatively reappear to see what was going on. I snapped this photo just after he'd made one of his reappearances. :)

Interestingly, jumping spiders don't have hugely "muscular" legs. Instead, they rely on segmented legs and blood flow to make their crazy jumps. When they're ready to jump, the spiders cause an extreme change in hemolymph pressure (the spider equivalent of blood pressure) by contracting the muscles in the upper region of their bodies. This forces the blood to their legs, and this causes the legs to extend rapidly. This quick and sudden extension of their legs is what propels them in the direction they're aiming. Who would've thought...

European Earwig ( Forficula auricularia ) -- Fort Collins, CO
Earwigs get their name from the archaic belief that they crawl into sleeping people's ears, but that's a complete myth. Earwigs are completely harmless to humans and do not spread disease (another myth), but are nonetheless considered pests for misguided reasons. It probably doesn't help their case that they look like scary, prehistoric space aliens. :)

There are 22 types of Earwigs in the United States and there are over a 1,000 different species all over the world. The earwigs most often seen around my area are European earwigs, which were introduced into the U.S. in the 1900s.

Thanks to their formidable set of pincers or forceps, earwigs are omnivores and often capture hearty meals consisting of both plants and insects such as leaves, flowers, fruits, mold and other bugs. Earwigs hide during the day and live outdoors in large numbers. They can be found under piles of lawn clippings, compost or in tree holes.

Earwig females are fiercely protective mothers. An earwig can lay dozens of eggs at a time and the mother will devote her time to safeguarding her eggs. In fact, she’ll stay with them until they hatch — up until their first molt. After that, the nymphs are free to roam on their own.

Remember, these amazing little insects are not harmful to humans in any way and can actually be beneficial by virtue of all the mold, bacteria, and smaller bug "cleanup" that they do.

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P.S. I haven't posted in a while because I've been crazy busy at work and in life, but hopefully I'll be back to a more regular posting schedule fairly soon. Thanks a lot for all the kind comments on my past posts that I haven't had a chance to acknowledge or respond to yet. :)

Rufous Hummingbird ( Selasphorus rufus ) -- Rawah Wilderness, northern Colorado
This perky little fellow was one of several Rufous males frequenting the feeders at our mountain cabin retreat in the Rawah Wilderness a few years ago. These tiny guys are fierce, and will aggressively defend their territory (which they seem to define as anywhere in their immediate vicinity) against other males, often having acrobatic jousts and dogfights overhead. But amazingly enough, I actually got several of them to land on my finger at various times by holding it on top of the feeder perch and remaining very still while they sipped the sugar water. All in all, they didn't seem to be very afraid of me at all. :-)

Western rufous hummingbirds migrate through the Rocky Mountains and nearby lowlands during May to September to take advantage of the wildflower season. They may stay in one local region for the entire summer, in which case the migrants, like breeding birds, often aggressively take over and defend feeding locations. Most winter in wooded areas in the Mexican state of Guerrero, traveling over 2,000 mi (3,200 km) by an overland route from its nearest summer home — an incredible journey for a tiny bird weighing only 3 to 4 grams.