What Season Is This?

Ah, another beautiful day in January. We flirted with 60ºF today, but I don't think we made it. Still, it was glorious. I am not sure we can call this a January thaw, because January has mostly been pretty mild to begin with, and there have been days at least the the low 50s scattered throughout. But I will say this - we are expecting a nor'easter tomorrow into the next day, and because of this mild weather pattern, we are supposed to get a lot of rain rather than a huge pile of snow. A nor'easter, you see, is not a snowstorm by definition - it has more to do with the wind, and the direction of it. Usually our nor'easters are snowstorms, because usually it's cold here in the winter, but at the moment we're having rain temperatures.

But enough about things that haven't happened yet - today was lovely, sunny, and warm, so I went out looking for bugs before I went off to the beach (no, I didn't go swimming, and I was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt - it's not THAT warm here).

The warm weather is obviously waking up (though they aren't really sleeping lots of bugs, and though I haven't actually seen a lot of them, I think I have heard them. A lot of insects and other creatures spend the winter in the leaf litter, and if you stand very still and quiet you can hear the sounds of very small things stirring among the dried leaves in the woods. It's the sound of nature stirring.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Some kind of Hemiptera.

 

 I found another in another part of the yard.

 There were springtails around, too.

 And quite a lot of candy-striped leaf hoppers. It's curious that it's only the candy-striped leaf hoppers I ever see on these warm winter days, never other species of leaf hoppers or other plant hoppers.

I would say that it was the arachnids, and not the insects, that won the day in the backyard today, though. The last few days I have seen a lot of random spider threads on plants in the backyard, but haven't seen any spiders until today. Arachnid Appreciation:
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 There were a couple of these spiders on a rock - at least two of them, but they were small and moving around so it is possible that there were three.

 

 There was a jumping spider on the same rock.

 Presumably the same harvestman from yesterday, because it was in the same place.

 And those tiny mites that were with it were still there.

Too small to see, really.

January Picnic

On this lovely January day with the temperature in the mid 50s we decided to eat our lunch outside in the arbor. Today was the kind of day that would be considered freezing in September, but was gloriously balmy in January, even a January that hasn't been all that cold most of the time. I shared a picture of our picnic on social media, and my mother commented that at this time of year at least there are no flies out.

But there were:

 There were several flies basking in the apricity* on the front of the house.

*Apricity means the warmth of the winter sun. In case that's a new word for you.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Also enjoying the apricity today were several candy-striped leaf hoppers.

 There were six or seven of these on one mountain laurel plant.

 And an ant.

 And something waiting for actual springtime, rather than just a spring-like winter day.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Harvestman...

 And I didn't notice these when I took the picture, but they do look like mites, so that would make them arachnids, not insects. Not that I can really tell. They were TINY.

Snow Comes and Goes

Ah, first blog of 2017! We've had a lot of cold weather, and then over the weekend, adding up two snowstorms we got a little over a foot of snow, but it's warmed up the last two days, and most of that is gone. So, with temperatures in the low 50s, and having spotted a crane fly on my porch when I went out to get the mail, I decided to do a bug walk today. Mostly I found what I expected - a few small swarms of crane flies that I did not photograph, a winter firefly that I did - and  a couple of things I did not expect.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Rove beetle. I prodded a rotting log and found this inside.

The aforementioned winter firefly, basking on a tree trunk as they are wont to do on warm winter days.

I was surprised to find an ant crawling on another tree trunk.

The only surprising thing about finding this springtail gliding on a tiny puddle is that there were not more of them.

As I said, we had around a foot of snow a few days ago, but between the rain last night, and a couple of days of warmth, most of it was gone today, except for about an inch in some of the shaded areas of the backyard. There was plenty to see on the snow, though:

 Obviously there were animals (voles?) tunneling under all that snow...

 ... and in the ground, too.

 There were many animal footprints in that thin remaining layer, all of which must have been made today.

 I found this cocoon on a tree branch - waiting for spring, just like me.