Optimism

Today I had a little time, and a lot of sunshine, and I was feeling optimistic after finding bugs on the front porch last night, so I did a quick bug walk before we went out for the day. I saw a few gnats, nothing interesting or even photographable, but I did enjoy the sunshine, which has been scarce lately, and I found an interesting insect in the house.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Plume moth, on the bathroom skylight. I had to stand on the counter, one foot on either side of the sink, to get this picture. I am pretty sure this is another insect that came in with the Christmas tree. This is definitely NOT an insect I see this time of year. Another ChristMOTH?

Midnight Moth

As I eased my way cautiously up my icy front walkway late this evening - almost midnight - I had no idea what was waiting for me on my front porch, but from the fact that I am writing a blog about it you can probably guess...

Backyard Bug of the Day!

 I am calling this my Merry ChristMOTH. There were two of them, but the other was too high up on the wall to get a picture.

There was a tiny crane fly, too. Today the temperature was in the mid-40s (and it rained most of the day), but it was around the freezing mark when I got home, so I was really surprised to see insects on the porch. Pleasantly surprised.

Happy Holidays, Bug Fans!

Winter

Today was the winter solstice here in the northern hemisphere, also known as the first day of meteorological winter, and the shortest day of the year. It's not my favorite day, as you can imagine, because I like long hours of sunlight. But tomorrow the days start getting longer (though it will take a while to noticed), and that makes me happy. We've had a bit of actual wintery weather lately, cold, a bit of snow (that was mostly washed away by rain), and it has been too cold to find bugs, which is why you haven't seen a new post in a while. But this evening while I was wrapping Christmas presents on my dining room table I found an insect crawling among the ribbons.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Ladybeetle. It's not uncommon to find these in the house in the winter, because they try to come inside to keep warm. It's a little bit surprising that this is the first one I've found, but we didn't have the big swarms outside in the fall, so I don't think there were as many around this year. Not that I am complaining. One year we had a bit of an infestation, and even though they are generally considered one of the cuter and more charming insects, having hundreds of them in your house is unpleasant. They bite, they smell, and just nobody wants insects crawling all over the place, not even me. But I didn't mind this one. It is possible that it came in with the Christmas tree last weekend - sometimes I will find insects a few days after getting the tree.

Whatever holidays you may be celebrating, I hope they are happy!

A Speck

Last night we had a wee bit of snow, but then it turned to rain, and by noon today the snow was gone and the precipitation had stopped, and it had warmed up a bit, so I thought I might as well go outside and look for some bugs.

I mostly just found mud. I almost wiped out once, slipping in a muddy patch.

I did see some bugs - a few of the swarming crane flies, some sow bugs, and springails.

And this, the Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I don't know what this is. I can't even see it well enough to look it up. It might be a very, very young springtail, which seems pretty likely given that they are what's around right now, but I really have no idea.

 Even magnified, it's tiny.

 Here it is with a couple of springtails. Bear in mind that the larger of these two is about a millimeter long. The smaller of them (which I think is a different species?) I can barely see without the camera lens. I am not sure if I could see the Backyard Bug of the Day without it or not. You may remember one of the most recent blogs I posted I had pictures of a lot of springtails, and a tiny speck of a thing that I had not noticed when I took the pictures. Well, this is probably that tiny thing. And even when I saw it, and focused on it, it's still too small to know what it is.

 This was also a similar scenario to that day with the springtails and the tiny speck with legs. Again I found these in a puddle on the same rock, and it was two of the same critters who were being pushed together somehow.

 But this time the little one kept crawling on the bigger one.

 

 

 And another came to join them. Except it didn't appear to do it on purpose. I don't know what force was directing them to the same spot - they didn't seem to be swimming (though that might not be the best word anyway - they are on top of the water. And they can spring from there). On the other hand, they do have that spring underneath - maybe it pushes them around? Last time I saw these I thought those prongs sticking out the back of the smaller of these springtails was the spring outstretched in the act of springing, but today it was just out there, so maybe not.

 There's a fourth one at the top of this picture - and the small one crawling on the large(r) one again.

Birds of Many Feathers

Hi there! No posts for a while, because I haven't gone out looking for bugs this week. It's been cold, and the last time I did go out looking for them, I didn't find anything (although it wasn't that cold, so I was surprised at the lack of bugs. And in the interest of full disclosure, I did see a few bugs on the porch the other night, they just weren't interesting enough to take pictures and blog about). So, since the weather has been more or less the same all week, I didn't bother to go out again. The weather is about to get colder, so I think it will be a while before I go out looking again.

So, why am I here today? Because this blog isn't just about the bugs in my backyard, in spite of the name, it's about the other wild things in the backyard, too, and today, there were other interesting things flying around in my backyard.

Backyard Bird of the Day:

 I don't know what this is - I tried looking it up, and there are several birds that look like this. My guess was that it was a warbler that is migrating somewhere, but it also looks like a vireo. So... I don't know. I don't think I have ever seen one before, and there were several in the yard today, so I am guessing that they are migrating, whether it's a warbler or not. Maybe my mother will know what it is; Mom, what kind of bird is this?

I first spotted them on the birdbath that is just outside the window.

It was very crowded on the birdbath today.

 Anyway, as you can see from the two pictures just above this, taking pictures through the window is terrible, so I went outside to see if I could get better shots. And the birds promptly flew away. I stood out there for about twenty minutes, just staying still, and they came back and I was able to get a few shots.

 

 But they're birds, so...

 Back to the birdbath.

 Also in the backyard today, and on the birdbath - cedar waxwings. These I only got pictures of through the window.

 I have never noticed the red on their wings before.

 Another visitor to the birdbath - I think this is a house finch.

 And there were juncoes all over the driveway.

 There were other birds around, too, that I did not get pictures of: blue jays, chickadees... As I was standing outside waiting for the birds to relax around me, I could hear the reason that there were so many birds in the backyard today:

 The black birch trees were dropping their seeds. It wasn't windy, other than an occasional breezy gust, and it wasn't just because the birds were up there eating them - the trees were just raining seeds, enough that I could hear them hit the ground, and see them dropping like snow. They were all over the driveway and front walk.

As we near the beginning of a fresh, new year, I have once again created calendars of my bug pictures from this year, available at Zazzle. Click HERE to see my calendars and other insect and spider related items. I added some cards, posters, and Christmas ornaments, too, because who doesn't want a spider hanging on their Christmas tree?

Sedate Expectations

I keep telling myself to do away with expectations about what I will find in the backyard, because I am almost never right, but I can't help it, they pop into my head. They constantly adjust and fluctuate while I am out there, as I see how things are, but I am constantly surprised.

Take today. It was a pretty nice day, the temperature was in the 50s as it has been all week, it wasn't raining but everything was still pretty damp after getting 2.75 inches of rain over two days. Good conditions for finding bugs, you'd think, even in December. Then I managed to walk around almost the entire backyard without finding anything (except for one tiny area, but more on that later). And then, when I was just about done, and headed to the mailbox to pick up my mail and go inside, I found all kinds of surprising things.

First of all, a new-to-me bug for Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Tiny beetle, maybe 1/8 inch long. At first I wasn't going to bother with it, because I didn't think it was anything interesting, and it was on the ground, and scurried off the rock it was on when I spotted it, into a crevice next to the rock - not a comfortable place to photograph. I was on my face in the mud, basically, to get these shots. But it was worth it, because I am pretty sure this is an insect I have never seen before, and it's quite handsome.

The one thing that I expected to see and did today was springtails. They like the wet weather, and I found them in a few spots, but particularly on a rock in the backyard that had a small puddle on it:

 These are so tiny - maybe a millimeter from front to back - and adorable.

 There are more here than you can see - there's one in the background on the left that you probably can't even see now that I have told you it's there, because it's out of focus...

 

 And when I looked at this picture on the computer I noticed something I had not seen when I took the picture...

 

 An even tinier creature!

 The come in two different color schemes. I still don't know if those are different species, or just variations in the same species. Or maybe male and female, I don't know.

 One of the fun things about springtails is that they skate on top of puddles. These two - different species, one adult, and the other young, I think, were on the same puddle. For some reason, something to do with surface tension or something, they kept being pushed together by some invisible force. They didn't like it.

 They'd get pushed together...

 ... and then spring apart.

 The reason springtails are called springtails is because they have an organ underneath their bodies that allows them to spring by pushing off. It's normally folded up against their body, but I think here you can see them both mid-spring - I think that's the springy organ sticking out behind each of them.

 ... and pushed back together...

Other bugs:

 Another springtail, on a tree trunk

 Winter firefly

 Rove beetle

 Aphid and ant

The award for Most Unexpected Sighting today should probably go to this grasshopper

 But this wasp was a pretty surprising find, too. There were actually 3 wasps of different species within a couple of inches of each other in the rock garden. I got pictures of two, this one, and...

...this one.

 I still don't know what this is, but I think it's waspish. Perhaps a female ready to lay eggs, or infected by a parasite?

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I still occasionally see a bowl and doily spider around the yard, but lately they have not had the typical bowl-and-doily web. They hang out in places like the chicken wire around the garden.