Favoritos de wildlife77

This "rain bug" (actually a giant red velvet mite) appeared after a noon-time rain on the desert floor, after we noticed that termites were swarming. This rain bug is said to eat termites, although we did not witness it doing so.
The rain stopped around 1:10 p.m. We noticed termites swarming at about 1:25 p.m. We noticed these "rain bugs" at 3:12 p.m.

Photo #2 is a composite of pix taken 8 minutes apart, to approximately show the size of the rain bug. The left pix was my finger used as a scale next to a desert lily. I scaled that pix to make the grains of sand the same size as the pix on the right with the rain bug, since the pictures were taken in essentially the same area. I estimate from this image that the length from snout to bottom was ~10 mm, very close to my estimate from memory of about a half inch.
I saw one rain bug, and my companion saw another.
These rain bugs were fast-moving; I tried to move my camera at the same pace as the insect.