It's Still Snowy Here

Today was another day when I knew there were bugs active in the backyard before even going outside because a fly landed on the window. It was almost 50ºF out, so it made sense. The first thing I did when I went out, which has become my habit, was to check if anything was on the chrysanthemums. I didn't find any bugs there, and instead I found that many of the flowers had been chomped, probably by deer (and there was a lot of OTHER evidence that deer were all over my backyard last night, if you know what I mean. And I am not talking about footprints in the snow). As it turned out, there were not as many bugs as I was expecting to find. Yes, most of the ground is still covered with the snow that the meteorologists said would be washed away by the rain the day after it fell. But I was expecting a few more bugs anyway.

However, for the first time in a few days, I have a Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think it's a stonefly.

 Sorry, I thought I got better pictures. It was very low to the ground, and it was hard for me to get close enough because of my bad knee. I hate apologizing for bad pictures. I hate even taking bad pictures. Just ignore this whole paragraph. Except for this next part... This was the first bug I saw on my bug walk, and I thought it was an ant. I had to decide if I wanted to take its picture or not and here's the basic thought process: an ant isn't very interesting, and it's hard to get pictures of them when they're moving (which this was), but it could be the only bug I see, and I should record that I saw an ant, given the weather lately, and the snow on the ground, but it's so low to the ground, I don't think I can get a good picture anyway, but I might not find any other bugs...
After that I leaned in for a closer look, and realized it wasn't an ant anyway, so, I went for the pictures.

I mentioned a few days ago after we got all that rain in one afternoon that I suddenly had a pond in my backyard. It covered one of my paths, and was about 10 feet long and about 8 feet wide. I think it was about 6 inches deep in the middle. It appeared on Tuesday, had diminished to a deep puddle by Wednesday, and was gone on Thursday... until it snowed/sleeted/rained on Thursday night. Friday it was a pond of slush, and today it was water again, not quite as big a pond as it was on Tuesday. And today, I was able to find ONE springtail on the surface:

 There may have been more, and probably were, but spotting them has a lot to do with my position relative to the angle of the sunlight on the water. This is a tiny thing. Anyway, given how leaky my boots are, I could only really get close enough to take pictures of anything very close to the edge of the puddle.

There was a tiny swarm of winter crane flies at the base of a tree (which is usually where I find swarms of winter crane flies, and I have not yet found out why):

 When they are flying it is hard to tell swarms of winter crane flies from swarms of March flies (except that the crane flies are nearly always near the base of a tree, but the March flies can be, too), but you can usually tell from the pictures if you get the right moment. And when I say it was a tiny swarm, I mean there were 3 insects in this swarm. Any less than that and I don't think you could call it a swarm. I am going to post a few pictures, and you can see if you can spot any of the insects in them.

 

 Gnat. And that's that.