The Invasion

The thing about nature is that everything works in its place. For whatever ecosystem you have there are plants and animals that fit in, they have the climate they need, the food they need, and something to keep them in check. If you have a particular kind of plant, it will grow in that soil, and with the amount of water available, and there will be something that eats that plant. In turn, there will probably be something that eats the thing that eats that plant, which keeps the plant in check. But there will also be something that eats the thing that eats the thing that eats that plant, and so on, so that you have balance. Nature provides, to a certain extent, ways for animals, and seeds, and whatever to travel to new places, but for the most part, things live and grow in a spot that is right for them.

Humans, however, peripatetic beings that they are, sometimes circumvent nature's nicely balanced systems and move things to places where they shouldn't be. With plants it is very often on purpose, when people take plants they find attractive from one part of the world and plant them in another, and then you get problems like autumn olive, purple loosestrife, and the worst invasive plant of all, kudzu. In an environment where there are no animals that eat those plants, and in climates that are a bit too favorable for them, they out-compete native plants and take over. That ends up being bad for the animals that live there, because the invasives push out their food supplies. Animals can be problematic, too, when people intentionally move them from one place to another, like the rabbits that were brought to Australia and have run amok, or gyspy moth caterpillars that some fool brought to America in the hopes of using them to make silk, and when that didn't work, released them to wreak destruction (the fact that I am still pretty squicked out by caterpillars is probably due to the gypsy moth catastrophe from the early 80s. My skin still crawls thinking about it). Sometimes we humans bring things into new places accidentally; international trade allows critters to stow away and move to a new habitat that is not prepared to deal with them. But if the climate is nice to them, and there is nothing that wants to eat them, it can be disastrous.

Such is the case for an insect called the emerald ash borer. I have never seen one in my yard, and it is one insect that I do NOT want to find on my bug walks. What it does is kill ash trees. It has been found in Connecticut, and killed trees here, and I just hope that I won't have to deal with it. It is one of those insects that the DEP and whatever other agencies warn you to be on the lookout for, and so I have been, but here's my problem. I have never been all that clear on what the thing looks like. So there is an office at the DEP that I have contacted several times in the last several years, with pictures of bugs, asking them if the bug in question is an emerald ash borer. I think the scientists there find me annoying. However, they have paid me the compliment of pointing out that at least the pictures I have been sending  them are of borers. I am guessing they get sent pictures of a lot of things that are not even close. In fact, in my attempts to find out what the emerald ash borer actually looks like, I have come across pictures of bugs that people commonly mistake for emerald ash borers, and even I know that they're far off. But then, at this point I probably know more than the average person about the bugs of our state, even if I am a million miles from being an expert. So I am guessing these scientists spend a lot of time dealing with emails from people who are in a panic about the bright green bug they found in their yard. I get it, scientists. You have better things to do than write emails to people saying, no, that is not an emerald ash borer, it is a six spotted tiger beetle. But here's what you should be doing: putting a GOOD picture of the bug on your website! I have said many, many times that the internet cannot be trusted for things like insect identification, with a lot of bad information and worse pictures out there. But if you are tasked with dealing with the infestation of invasive insects, you really need to do a better job of informing people of that the things look like. With good pictures. Including pictures of the host plants. And pictures that show what size the bugs are - I know how hard it is to understand the real-life size of a bug from a picture.

Another problem with trying to identify invasive insects is that they are often not included in insect identification field guides. Particularly with recent infestations; if a new version of the book is out, they won't have information about it, even to say it's invasive. However, I was recently given the gift of a new field guide from a friend, and I was happy to see that there is a good picture of the emerald ash borer in it. So if I have another question about it, I won't have to email the scientists, unless I have a definitive sighting, in which case I am supposed to report it to them so they can do something about it.

So, since I have not found an emerald ash borer, you are probably wondering why I am babbling on about this. Well, it's because of today's Backyard Bug of the Day.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is, I believe, a Divergent Metallic Wood Borer. [Edit: having looked in other books I could be wrong about what kind of borer this is, but it is definitely a metallic borer] I have seen them in my yard in other years, and sometimes they do look a little bit green, so I have sent pictures of this bug to the scientists before. But now I know this is not the invasive emerald ash borer. Which means I can appreciate how awesome looking this bug is.

 It looks kind of steampunk.

Zoomed-in shot...

 Playing dead, so I get a good look at its underside. It looks even more mechanical from this side.

Weevils are terribly uncooperative insects:

 But they're cute.

As expected, sawfly larvae:

Random Bugs:

 Wasp. Female, I think - I am pretty sure that's not a stinger, it's an ovipositor.

 Click beetle.

 The leaf buds of this tree appear to be irresistible to ants. Every bud had an ant on it. And that is not an exaggeration. On the other hand, it is a very small tree, with so few branches that it is possible to see every bud with ants on them. Later, once there are actual leaves, experience tells me it will also be attractive to caterpillars. I really should learn something about tree identification, and figure out what kind of tree it is...

 This is not a rain drop; the skies were dark and broody all day, but it did not rain. This is sap. This is a grapevine that my husband trimmed back over the weekend, and sap is seeping out of the cut end. What's interesting to me is that the vine is slanted up - the sap is traveling upward.

The black birch trees continue to drip sap, even more than before. I got sapped again today.

Some kind of bird is contemplating building a nest on the wreath on my front porch. I didn't see the birds at all, but the evidence is there - and all over the porch. I don't know if they are testing it out, or if they really plan to build there (sometimes birds build a couple of nests before choosing one), but if they do, I guess we'll have to start using the back door for a while.

Today wasn't as spiderific as yesterday, but I did find a few, including a couple that I didn't spot yesterday. Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Didn't see this one yesterday.

 Or this one.

 This is the bush right in front of the house where the sawfly larvae are hatching and beginning to chomp on the needles. It is also full of spiders. For the most part, though, they are bowl-and-doily spiders; jumping spiders are kind of rare there. But here's this one.

 If you look closely in this picture you can see that what it has captured is a caterpillar. What you can't see is that it was still alive - but probably not for long. This really has not been a good couple of days for caterpillars.

Face-off. I wish I knew how this would have ended if my presence hadn't sent one of these scurrying.

I'll try to be less talky and preachy tomorrow.

Supercalli-spiderific-expialidocious

Bugs and their distant relations have been in the news lately. The distant relations I am talking about are ticks (I don't know if you'd really call them distant. They are in the same phylum; bugs/insects and arachnids are all arthropods. Make of that what you will). Every year around this time there will be an article in the newspaper declaring that it is going to be a bad year for ticks. It doesn't matter what kind of winter we just had, or what kind of spring we are having, or what kind of summer they think we are going to have, for some year every year is declared as going to be a bad year for ticks. Of course, what they mean by that is really that it is going to be a very good year for the ticks, and a bad year for people who don't want to be bitten by ticks (which is everyone, I presume). The rationale this year is that we had all that snow, and it insulated the ticks hiding in the ground (or on the ground, the article didn't make that clear) from freezing. But it also said that ticks have biological guards against freezing, so I don't see how that makes a difference. At any rate, this will be an extra bad year for people who don't want to be bitten by ticks, because scientists have found a new tick-borne disease for us to worry about and the new one is a virus, which means there is no cure for it, and it can kill you. Yay.

There were a couple of interesting articles about bees, too, mostly about threats against them, and the fact that it is not so much the domesticated honey bee we should be worried about, but the thousands of other species. They face several problems, including pesticides (okay, mostly pesticides) and apparently nicotine addiction, but one of the articles mentioned that a lack of food is another issue. Specifically, the problem is that there are too many areas without flowers. Too many paved places, and too many lawns. So, the article says we should all plant flowers, to save the bees. So go do it! This weekend! Plant some flowers in your yard, even if it's just a potted something on your porch. (And don't use pesticides) Save the bees! All of them!

Today was basically a perfect day in the backyard. Unless you happened to be a caterpillar. But more on that later. For me, the temperature was perfect, the day was sunny, and I found some gorgeous and interesting things.

The Backyard Bug of the Day was not the most interesting thing in the backyard today, but... wait, no, I just remembered something about the Backyard Bug of the Day that was pretty interesting. Carry on.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 This is a fourteen-spotted ladybug (but it should be called a checkered beetle, instead of the bug that IS called a checkered beetle, because this is checkered, and a beetle, whereas the nominal checkered beetle is a beetle, but not checkered. But I digress).

 Marching around on the chaise...

 Doing some wing flexing...

 Some... pushups?

 The bug was doing some grooming, and I spotted something interesting. Do you see that tiny speck to the left of the bug? More on that in a moment.

 I guessed correctly what this posture meant, but unfortunately mistimed my next shot, so I didn't get a picture of the ladybug flying away.

 Anyway, about that speck. This is that speck. This is a really, really, really, really, really tiny mite.

This is another one, ever so slightly less tiny. I think these two mites were removed from the ladybug during the grooming process. At least, that is how it appeared to me. It is possible that the mites just happened to walk by at that point, but it sure looked like during all that wing flexing, and stretching, and rubbing with legs that these two mites were expelled. Cool. But a tiny bit creepy. So, that is what was interesting about today's Backyard Bug of the Day.

I think this is the same kind of bee-or-wasp that was Backyard Bug of the Day a couple of days ago:

 I didn't get a close look at it, but it looks like it. On the other hand, there are thousands of species of bees and wasps in the world, so it could be something different that just looks similar.

 The plant it is on is a pussy willow bush.

Here's a zoomed-in look.

Random bugs:

 This ant is dragging a caterpillar. I saw another ant carrying an ant, and was impressed by that, until I saw this.

I think this is a caddisfly.

 Soon the crab apple trees will be blooming! Then the bees will be happy!

 I am keeping an eye on this - I am pretty sure that these are insect eggs of some kind, laid last fall. Which means either they all failed to hatch last year when they were supposed to, or they are hatching soon. I'll let you know what happens.

I found my first two photographic subjects today without even leaving the house - spiders on windows. In general this was a pretty spider-intensive day in the backyard. I found at least nine species, and possibly more, since I couldn't always tell if the jumping spiders were different species. And here I am going to warn you that if you are one of my mildly arachnophobic readers, today is a day for skipping the spider part of the blog - I'll leave a slightly longer buffer zone. If you are severely arachnophobic, leave now. Because some of these pictures will freak you out if pictures of spiders are a problem for you. If they are not a problem for you, scroll on, because there's awesomeness ahead.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 This is what greeted me when I opened the shutters on my bedroom window when I got up today. Of course, in real life it's only about 1/4 inch wide, from leg tip to leg tip, so it was more cute than dramatic, like the picture.

 Then this was on the storm door as I was going outside. I got a lot of pictures of this spider, but I chose this one because of the fangs.

 Not so intimidating, is it?

 I saw a lot of jumping spiders today, and while at the beginning of the spider season I was seeing them all the time on the side of the house, now I am seeing a lot of them elsewhere in the yard, or in the wild, as I like to think of it (though there are still quite a number on the side of the house). Also, a lot of them have bugs in their grasp when I see them, so the hunting is going pretty well.

Okay, we're up to six species so far...

 This jumping spider has the most amazing chelicerae.

 Let's see those zoomed in... That is a caterpillar that it is clutching, by the way. Like I said, not a good day to be a caterpillar in the backyard today. Funny how except for the loopers I saw a few weeks ago, I have not seen any caterpillars so far this spring...

And now zoomed in more, and turned sideways so that it looks the right way 'round. Look at all the amazing colors of this spider!

Here's the full body view of that one. I like the gold heart on its abdomen.

Okay, so I only chose pictures of eight species, but trust me that there were at least nine.  Not too shabby for one day in the backyard!