Leave the Leaves

There was a news story making the rounds of the media recently about the National Wildlife Federation urging people not to rake the leaves on their lawns. The reason they wanted people to leave the leaves was because there is a lot of life in a leaf pile; a lot of insects use leaf litter as food and as shelter for overwintering, or as a place to pupate, and other reasons I can't recall. Do it for the butterflies, the articles said, in essence, because a lot of caterpillars chrysalize in leaf litter. Moths do, too. And if you don't care about the Lepidoptera, maybe think about the birds that would be eating them in the spring. There are animals other than insects who use leaf litter as habitat, too, like salamanders and chipmunks (so says the NWF. And I did see a chipmunk dive under some leaves the other day). So if you rake up the leaves and burn them, or put them in a plastic bag, or chop them up with a lawnmower, you are killing the things that are living there, or at least destroying their homes. Better, we are told, to rake them into your flowerbeds, if you can't stand to leave them on the lawn. That is basically what we do here; my husband blew the leaves off the paths and the small lawn area of the backyard into the meadow and woodland areas where they can stay there and provide homes for whatever wants to be there.

This idea of leaf litter as a safe harbor for arthropod life came home to me today on my bug walk. It was a fairly warmish (for November) day, in the high 50s, and I was having trouble finding any bugs. Then I happened to see a bug on a leaf by the side of the path. When I bent down to look at it, I saw a spider nearby. Then I saw another bug (which you will soon see as Backyard Bug of the Day). And another. And in looking at my pictures later, found another. I found all of these insects and arachnids in an area of less than one square foot. And they were only the ones on top of the leaf litter, who knows what may have been underneath?

You never want to jump in another leaf pile again, do you?

Anyway, I was impressed by what I found there. The very essence of why we should leave the leaves.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Springtail

 It was tiny, and kept moving, so I don't have any really good pictures, but I think from the ones I will post you can figure out what it looks like. To give you a sense of how small it is, it's about the size of this letter I. Maybe smaller.

 Here I was photobombed by another springtail of a different kind. Can you spot it (it's a totally different shape).

 The color was different depending on the angle of the light. Sometimes it was gold, somethings it was blue.

So, what else was in the leaf litter?

 This wasp (I think) was the first bug I spotted. I almost didn't bother to bend down to look at it or take its picture, because I thought it was just a fly. I am glad I did.

 A tiny hopper.

Random Bugs:

 Another hopper, on a leaf that it still clinging to a vine.

 A totally unexpected find today.

 Can you see that the looper is making a silk thread? (I have no idea why).

 I found a really nice swarm again today. Lots of bugs, and they were so charming in the way they flew together, bobbing up and down in the air like they were Cirque du Soleil performers on bungees.

 Then I stepped too close, and they all seemed to disappear. I looked closer and saw that they had all just immediately landed on the ground. Of course, when I got too close to them where they were on the ground, they would fly to a new spot. So, I stepped back, and they all sprang into the air again and went back to their bobbing. Just to test them, I stepped close again, and about half of them landed, and the other have moved as a group so they were to the side of me instead of in front of me. They were fascinating.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 The spider from the leaf litter.

Spider on a tree trunk. Remember about a week ago I posted pictures of that spider that I would see every day on the same tree trunk, and that day was the first day I saw it move? That was also the last day I saw it at all. But this is the same kind of spider, on a different tree.