Bug Delivery

I recently read an article singing the praises of beetles, and saying that they are the most important animals on earth. They do certainly undertake some vital tasks–where would we be without dung beetles?–and many of them are quite beautiful and interesting. There are a lot of them, too, millions of species, scientists speculate, and if you were to put all of the beetles in the world on one side of a balance, and all of the people on the other side, supposedly the balance would tip in favor of the beetles. I quite like Coleoptera (aka beetles), but they're not all 100% beneficial to our human lifestyle.

Case in point, today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Carpet beetle, delivered to me with my newspaper. Here you see it reading the Miss Manners column, no doubt concerned with the proper placement of the spoon at the breakfast table, for eating soft-boiled eggs (Yes, that's what it was about). I should probably not make this the Backyard Bug of the Day, because it is a pest, but I am anyway, for reasons of aesthetics, and because it amuses me to open my newspaper and find a bug crawling around in it. I put it outside after taking its picture, though, because I am not keen on bugs that eat things like rugs and upholstery, as carpet beetles do.

The weather didn't look promising for a bug walk, but I did one anyway, and here's what I found:

Two springtails on a tiny puddle.

Little Minds

Today as I walked around my backyard looking for bugs, I wondered what it's like to be a bug in the winter, specifically one of those bugs that comes out on nice days, when it's not freezing out. I know they have tiny, little brains (do they even have brains?), and probably don't have a sense of self, but going in and out of whatever level of unconsciousness is brought on by the cold... do they know it? Or is it like being sedated for surgery, where you wake up hours later and it doesn't feel like any time has passed at all? Is there some level of decision-making, where the bug will think, "Yeah, this feels like a nice day, I'll crawl out of my hideaway and fly around a bit," or "Ugh, it's too cold, I'm staying in"? What makes a winter firefly decide to come out and sun itself, instead of staying tucked away under a bit of tree bark?

Whatever it is, it did not entice any winter fireflies out today. I was baffled; it was 50ºF, sunny, and I couldn't find any bugs. I saw one winter crane fly on the side of the house when I walked out with my camera (it flew away before I could get a picture) and one that flew past me as I was walking back to the house (I didn't get a picture of that, either), and those were the only two bugs I saw today. No springtails of any species, no winter fireflies, no birch catkin bugs, no beetles, no candy striped leaf hoppers basking on quivering leaves.

So why am I writing a blog right now, you ask, if there was nothing to see? Well, I didn't see any insects, but I that doesn't mean I didn't see any arthropods.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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It's a two-fer–a spider with a mite attached to it. I didn't notice the mite until I looked at it on the computer. First time I've seen that in the winter.

Squishing

Today I had to wait until it stopped raining to go outside and look for bugs, but I was keen to do so because the temperature was in the mid-50s, and I thought I should find a lot of bugs. This was another one of those rainy January days when you can't help but think as you squish around the sodden backyard about how much snow you'd be shoveling if the temperature was about 25 degrees colder (Probably about 6-8 inches, and tomorrow will be about 20º colder). However, it was rather late in the afternoon by the time I went out, and I think that the bugs decided not to bother coming out after all that rain. I did see a lot of springtails again, but this time instead of seeing them everywhere, I saw them in large numbers in a few places. Mostly on the garden shed and the wheelbarrow that leans up against it.

As you can see here:

 This is the end of the wheelbarrow handle, about a one-and-a-half inch square.

 

 There was one tree that had a lot of this kind of springtail.

And I found a couple of these, sporting some rain on their backs:

 I tried looking this up, finally, and it may be a Birch Catkin Bug. It's an introduced species, and it makes sense that they would be around in my backyard, because their favorite food (according to Insects of New England and New York) is birch seeds (which I guess are called catkins? [Edit: no, the catkins are the flower spikes]), and black birch is the dominant tree species in my backyard. The book doesn't mention if it's normal to see them in the winter.

 

 

 I found this tiny pupal case attached to a tree. It is made of two bits of a leaf, held together with silk, and inside a tiny caterpillar is spending the winter, turning into a tiny moth.

I saw a few spiders today, so here's Arachnid Appreciation:
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 This was the only one that was even a little bit cooperative, though.

 This one, not so much.

Springing, But Not Spring

As I walked around my backyard today I had to remind myself about a hundred times, "It's not spring. It's not spring. It's not spring." Because it felt like spring, but if I let myself start thinking that it is spring, and winter is over, and relax into my springtime state of mind I am going to be in for a shock when winter remembers itself and revives its normal activities. It's still January, after all. There's still 2 months of official winter yet, including the month that is on average the snowiest, never mind that cold and snow can linger beyond the astronomical moment when springtime begins. All of which is to say, I have to remind myself not to get my hopes up. It's not going to be lovely mild weather from here on out. Flowers are not about to sprout and bloom. The trees are not about to break out their flowers and leaves. Every day the backyard is not going to be teeming with insect life. And yet, today, colder than the last few days and completely overcast, there were a lot more bugs for me to find. I knew there would be bugs today as soon as I opened the curtains when I got up–there was a swarm of crane flies bobbing around outside the window.

Mostly I found one kind of insect, all over the place. Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Springtails. After weeks of searching in vain, I finally found springtails, lots and lots of springtails. They were EVERYWHERE.

 Skating on the surface tension of a puddle–I looked on the puddles for them yesterday and the day before, and there were none. Today... all over. This is probably my favorite thing about springtails, the way they glide along on the surface of water.

 Hard to photograph, though, because I did not want to kneel in the mud.

 On a tree trunk...

 ... on a rock...

 ... one a leaf...

 A different species, on a tree trunk...

 On the lawn furniture...

So, what else was out there on this chilly, gray day?

 

 Biggest surprise: candy striped leaf hopper. Not that unusual, in that I have seen them basking in the sun on warmer winter days (think 50s) when it is sunny, but today was NOT warm (I think it was about 42ºF when I went out) and it was definitely not sunny.

 

 I think this is some kind of weevil.

 

 Twice-stabbed lady beetle

 

 In spite of the swarm I saw outside the window, this is the only crane fly I saw on my bug walk.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Tiny spider, on the side of the garden shed, where there were also a lot of springtails, which I presume provide food for the spider.

A Quick Look

In a hurry? Not much time to read this blog today? No problem, it will only take you a few seconds.

Today I saw a couple of flies:

 This is the only one that would let me take its picture, and this is as close as I could get.

And I saw a small swarm of winter crane flies, and got a picture of this one:

That was it. It was sunny, it was warm (for January, and warm enough for bugs), but that's all I could find. I did put my face through a spider thread (accidentally) so there must have been one active in the last few days, but I didn't see it. Perhaps a few more days of mild weather will bring out more insects.

Melting and Flowing

We enjoyed another January thaw today, and in my case I mean I enjoyed literally watching the snow melt. It's very soothing. I could hear the water seeping into the ground. It was a gorgeous day. People who live in places where the weather is more or less the same all the time can't possibly understand how exhilarating it is to experience changes like this.

The sap was flowing in the woodpecker holes in the trees:

I had hoped that with the warmth (almost 50ºF) and the sunshine there would be a lot of bugs around, but not really.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 An ant. It moved very slowly and sluggishly. In this shot it is walking on ice in a puddle (a puddle that was woefully lacking in springtails, I might add).

 Another ant, different species, on a tree.

I saw a couple of these Hemiptera:

 

 

 And some kind of Hemiptera nymph.

And one winter firefly.

The next few days are also supposed to be warm, so maybe more bugs will come out.

The Plunge

I don't like to complain (though I do it a lot), and I hate to keep going on about the weather (which I also do a lot–I like weather, and it is often pertinent to the subject of insects) but I am pretty disappointed in how nature turned out today. I thought that today was going to be like yesterday, rainy and warm, and then the forecast changed to say that it would be in the 50s again, but the rain would end in the morning, and I was extremely psyched because warm air, plus not raining, and maybe some sunshine thrown in, and I was sure to find a lot of cool bugs today! But here's what happened: the rain did, in fact, end in the morning. And the sun did come out. But the temperature, while it did peak at 58ºF, did so early in the morning, and then began to plummet. At 8:00 in the morning it was 58ºF. By noon it was 36ºF. I went out to do my bug walk at about 12:30. By then it was too cold for the bugs, and they had gone back into their cozy nooks (if they had ever come out) and I didn't find much at all.

I did, finally, find one winter firefly:

 That's it's back end sticking out of an ironic place: a hole made in a tree trunk by a woodpecker (I think) that was probably looking for insects to eat (I assume). And instead, it made a little perch for this winter firefly to sit in the sunshine for a while.

I found two flies:

 This is on one of the rocks down by the street, which, particularly when it's sunny, is a warmer spot than the rest of the yard.

 Basking on a tree trunk.

Other than a couple of springtails that I found under a piece of wood (and were moving too fast to be photographed), and a few things I saw in flight, that's it. Oh, if only the temperature could have waited a few hours to drop, or just not dropped so fast! Alas. Well, the interesting thing (besides how fast and how much the temperature dropped today–it was 22ºF by 9 pm, dropping 35 degrees in 13 hours), is that the snow in the backyard was completely gone. Not even a stray patch in the cooler shaded areas. And between late Thursday night and this morning we got 2.5 inches of rain. If it had been been below freezing that would have been about a foot of snow. Winter is so interesting.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Not a spider, but a mite, scurrying around on a tree trunk.

Warm Winter Weather

As forecast, today was warmer, and stormy; it rained all day. I couldn't do a bug walk, so my only recourse to find bugs was the porch light. Here is what I found:

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Caddisfly.

That is all.

Thawing Out

Today began my second favorite season. My favorite season, as I have probably mentioned many times, is Spring. My second favorite is January Thaw. Now, I realize that it is not a season, really. But to me there are many more seasons than just Spring, Summer, Winter, and Autumn. There are bug seasons, and flower seasons, and weather seasons... and there is January Thaw, which might last a day, and might last a week, and it perfectly delightful. Some January Thaws are warmer than others, getting up into the 60s for a glorious day or two. We're not going to have that, I don't think. But given that this past Sunday was record-breakingly cold overnight, and that Monday was the first time since Christmas that the temperature was above freezing, a couple of days in the 50s sounds incredible. We didn't quite reach that today, topping out at 49 and a bit, I think, but it was wonderful. And it is especially nice to have a January Thaw when there is snow on the ground, because it's a very agreeable thing to tromp around in the snow in a t-shirt and feel comfortable (all of this being relative, because if the temperature gets down to 50ºF in September, it's not t-shirt weather). So I did some snow tromping today, in my new, not-leaky, warm boots, my arms exposed in a t-shirt, and went looking for insects.

I have been out looking for insects a couple of times this week; although it was in the 30s, the high 30s, I thought maybe with the sunshine there would be some winter fireflies about, and I have kept looking for snow fleas. I didn't find either, but I was sure I would today, as warm as it was, even though there was no sunshine. I didn't find either, and I didn't find any winter crane flies or other flies, as I thought I might. But today was not disappointing by any means.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Woolly bear caterpillar, also known as Isabella tiger moth caterpillar. Not shocking to see in the winter, because they overwinter as caterpillars, and have a tendency to wander when the temperature is above freezing, I think. But given that the ground is mostly covered with snow, it is certainly not something I expected to see crawling up the side of the house. If you were trying to figure out what kind of weather we're going to have this winter, I think that this particular caterpillar is giving mixed signals; the black stripe in the front is quite large, but the one in the back is quite small. I am not sure how that fits into the folkloric method of forecasting the winter, given that it is supposedly determined by the relative lengths of the black and brown segments.

 

Though I didn't find any of the insects I expected, the woolly bear was not the only one I found unexpectedly:

 Some kind of Hemiptera.

 A sowbug is not so unexpected, given the warmth and the wetness involved in melting snow. And I know, this is a terrible picture of the sowbug, but it's a pretty good picture of the photobombing springtail to the left of the frame. Those were not surprising at all; thought I didn't find any snow fleas, which are another species of springtail, I was certainly on the lookout for these, as well, and did espy a couple.

I saw a few small flying things, but I didn't get a close enough look to know what they were. Gnats, or something. There were also a couple of midges that were attracted to the porch light, but they did not remain to be photographed. It remains to be seen if I will be able to go out looking for bugs tomorrow; the next couple of days are supposed to be even warmer than today, but it is also supposed to be pouring rain for the next two days, so I guess I'll have to wait and see.

 I was not expecting to find any spiders, either, but here's some Arachnid Appreciation:
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The white background is snow.

Winter Visitor

 This is the blog for SUNDAY, JANUARY 7, 2018. I forgot I had taken a picture of a bug today, and so I am writing this late.

We humans provide ourselves with shelter against the elements, which have been rather disagreeable lately, and sometimes lucky insects manage to find a way inside to take advantage of the coziness. I am sure today's Backyard Bug of the Day came into the house months ago, when it was warmer outside and bugs of its kind were active. Or maybe it came in with the Christmas tree a couple of weeks ago. What I am pretty certain about today is that even though I found this bug near the front door, it did not come in today; it would not have been active in the weather we have been having lately. But today it crawled out of whatever hiding place it was in, and happened to wander across my path.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I do feel a little sorry for insects that decide to try to overwinter in the house, because for most of them, there is nothing to eat. This is a Hemiptera, and it looks kind of like a western conifer seedbug, which I guess means it could have been feeding on the Christmas tree all this time. But the Christmas tree is going out tomorrow, and then there won't be anything for it to eat, unless it plans to dine on my spider plant, which I don't think will appeal to it. On the other hand, it might be some other species of Hemiptera, and some of those are insectivorious. Now, I am sure this is not the only insect hiding out in my house for the winter, but chances are there isn't such a great, easy-to-find pool of prey for it, if that is what it eats.

Still, I let it wander off. It's not hurting me, or anything in the house, so I didn't feel the need to send it outside into the cold. Maybe I have just sentenced it to a protracted death. Maybe if I had tossed it out it would have gone dormant from the cold, and revived in the spring. And maybe it will just find its own way back outside. But for now, at least it's cozy in here.

A Wing

Today the icy grip loosened a bit (it got to 29ºF. It's all relative), and as I went out to get the newspaper in the sunshine I thought that maybe I should try a bug walk today, just because I might find some snow fleas, or perhaps spot a winter firefly basking on a tree trunk. What I did not expect was to pick up my newspaper and find this:

 There was an insect wing on my newspaper bag. I don't know where it came from. Everything is covered in snow. A rather prosaic guess would be that it was probably in the car of the person who delivers our paper since a buggier time of year, and static electricity stuck it to the newspaper bag. I think insect wings are beautiful, so it was nice to see, even if it's always a bit sad to see a wing detached from its insect (although ants rip off their own wings after they swarm, so I guess it's not always sad).

Since I have lost perspective on weather, I then proceeded to do my bug walk with the temperature below freezing. I probably should have made a connection between my instinct that I didn't have to wear my tick-repellent pants and the unlikelihood of finding bugs, but I didn't. I am pretty sure I saw a gnat, though, but it was something I spotted in my peripheral vision, so I can't be 100%. I did not find any winter fireflies; I should have known it was too cold for them. And though I did eventually find something, which I will show you in a minute, I regretted going for a bug walk today, my first time walking around my backyard since around midnight on Christmas Eve. It wasn't the cold, it was that my backyard was a scene of carnage.

 I do love the marks made in the snow by birds' wings and tails when they swoop down, but it it hard not to think about what they may have swooped down to grab. Maybe this was a bird grabbing some of the bread I tossed out yesterday, but it's a pretty big tail mark. More likely it was a bird that swooped down to grab something else that was dining on the bread. But this is a mild scene; elsewhere in the yard the snow was bloody, with bits of fur fluttering in the breeze. There were two such scenes where something (most likely a bird, based on the lack of predator footprints around them) ate rabbits or squirrels. I love the predators equally with their prey, but it is hard not to feel sympathy for the defenseless ones. Except they're not defenseless, they're fast, they can see, they can hear... It's a system, and they all have their part. But bloody snow is gross and disturbing, as was the unidentifiable thing I found on the snow, too, that I didn't want to examine closely.

As I should have expected, except for the possible gnat, I didn't find any insects out and about today in the snow, not even snow fleas on or near trees, but I did have some curiosity about what I would find if I dug up a piece of wood out of the snow (only about an inch or two deep in some places) and turned it over. There was one thing that immediately scurried out of sight, so I don't know what that was, but I did get to see this Backyard Bug of the Day:

Springtail. I am not sure if it's one of the species that are referred to as snow fleas. When I flipped the board it got dumped into the snow, but it made its way back to the dirt. I think this has already been Backyard Bug of the Day lately (relatively speaking, lately), but I don't care. Props to this bug for being findable in the snow and cold.

 This one, another species of springtail, was also under the board. Here it is crawling among ice crystals on the piece of wood. I would guess that the board and the snow are at least some insulation about the extreme cold we've been having, but they can't be much. The board was frozen to the ground.

Tomorrow we are supposed to have a blizzard. And then the temperature is supposed to drop again, to be brutally cold for a couple of days. Definitely NOT bug weather.