Snowy

 Hello there. It's been a while–almost exactly a month. I am still on hiatus, and haven't been doing any bugs walks. That's not to say I haven't seen any bugs, although lately all I have seen are springtails (which I found frozen to the surface of the pond last week. I tried to take pictures, but they didn't come out), and, to my great surprise, predaceous diving beetles, which up until a couple of days ago I was still finding in the stream, despite the cold. It's possible they are still active there now, I just haven't seen them in a couple of days. The stream is flowing well, now that we are getting regular rain. But what we got last week was snow, and up until today the temperature has been down around freezing every day, so the snow has stuck around. Today was close to 40ºF, so the snow started to get a bit slushy, and it was obviously warm enough to bring out some bugs.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Winter crane fly. I saw several of them on my woods walk today.

Backyard Bird of the Day:

I don't know what kind of bird this is, and I am not going to look it up. It's a bird of prey. It sat on this branch for quite a while. This tree is close to the bird feeder, so I thought maybe it was looking for a small bird to eat, but there were birds on the feeder and on the ground around it, and the predator didn't go after them, and they didn't seem to care that the predator was there.

 I did see it looking down at the ground several times, but I could not tell what it might be seeing down there.

Note, by the way, that this bird is following Bird Law, and posing behind twigs so I can't get a clear shot.

Fluffing up and preening:

It seems to have lost its head.

Standing on one foot. You can just see the foot poking out of the feathers of its belly.

Cleaning its feet

Ruffly

Spotting something:

Time to launch:

It was a drop-and-swoop kind of takeoff. I don't think that it went after something on the ground, but since I was looking through the camera, I missed what happened after this moment.

Yesterday was the winter solstice, one of my least favorite days of the year. I love daylight. Today is the day that the days start getting longer again, which to me is definitely something to celebrate. It's unlikely that I will be posting again soon, so Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Oh, and I have not made any new calendars this year (Yet. It could still happen), but if you want any of my previous calendars, they are still available at  my Zazzle Store. You can set the starting month of the calendars for any month you like. There are masks with my photos available, too, in case you have ever wanted a mask with real personality.

Springtail Rain

 Hello again. I found something interesting in my yard today, so here I am to tell you about it. We got a lot of rain today, from the early morning hours until just around noon. I went outside to check the mail around the time the rain stopped, and from the moment I walked out on the porch I saw that there were springtails everywhere. They were on the front steps, on the walkway down to the mailbox, on the yard furniture, on rocks, on the side of the house... everywhere. As I was walking back to the house without the mail (because it had not arrived yet), I happened to glance at our rotting jack o'lantern, sitting on a rock at the edge of the woods where my husband put it when I asked him to move if off the porch (I asked him to do it because it is moldy, and I am allergic to mold, so I didn't want to carry it back to the compost pile. Apparently, he didn't want to carry it back there, either, so it's on a rock in front out the house, grinning at me when I look out), and I wondered if, even though it is collapsing as it decays, it would be full of rain water. I don't know why I thought of that, or why I decided to go over and look inside to see if it was filled with rainwater, but I did, and it was. It was also full of the most springtails I have ever seen crowded together in my life:

So many springtails. And one of these things is not like the others...

There's one of a different species in there. Well, there could be more, that's the one I spotted Where's Waldo style.

Then on my woods walk, I spotted this:

Sorry, cellphone photo. These are snowfleas, another species of springtail, on a bridge over a stream. The stream has been dry for months, with a few pools of water collecting in the rains of the last month, but today it was running because 2.5+ inches over about 8 hours is pretty substantial for us right now.

So there you have it. Masses of springtails, and 3 species.

Gross Post

 I'm going to start here today by posting a couple of pictures of flowers just as a buffer to keep you from seeing what I really am here to post in case you don't want to see it. What I am really here to post today is pretty gross, so this is your chance to just bail without scrolling down to see it. The flowers are here to protect you, don't go past them if you don't want to see the gross thing I took a picture of today.

The chrysanthemums are still blooming, in spite of the frosts we've had. I have been covering the plants, but this one is too far away from the others to be covered by the old sheet I am using, and it is continuing to bloom in spite of being unprotected from the frosts. Ironically, the reason I wasn't covering this one to begin with is because it wasn't doing so well, so I didn't think it mattered whether or not I covered it, because it wasn't going to bloom anyway. And here it is, blooming.

I am going to provide you with a picture of a winter ant on a pumpkin, too, for an extra buffer:

Okay, now for the gross thing, scroll down. I guess it technically counts as Arachnid Appreciation:

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I saw something odd on the driveway when I went out to get the mail today; it looked like a squashed, dead mouse. When I looked at it closer, and poked it with a stick, I realized that it was a squashed, dead mouse. But when I poked it, a whole bunch of mites came swarming out. I went inside to get my camera, even though it is disgusting to photograph a dead mouse, and had to poke it with a stick again to get the mites to come back out. Not as many came out the second time, and they disappeared pretty quickly, but here you go, a picture of mites on a dead mouse. Definitely not something I expected to see in my yard.

What Frost?

 Did you miss me? I know, I know, I have heard that song with the lyrics, "How can I miss you if you won't go away." I just wanted to post the one insect picture I took today. I haven't seen any insects on the chrysanthemums in several days, even though it was pretty warm for a while. Then we had freezes for a few nights, and though I covered the flowers overnight, I didn't expect any insects to visit them. Then today:

Hover fly. I love to see insects with pollen all over their faces; I think it's cute. 

As for other bugs, there was a fly on the side of the house, and those were the only insects I saw today. I heard a couple of crickets in the woods. And with all the rain this week there has been water in some of the stream pools, and a couple of times I have seen predatious water beetles. It's definitely not a buggy time of year. One I won't miss, though, is the mosquitoes; though the frost does not generally kill off the insects, it does kill off those. Not the ticks, however. Yesterday when I was working in the woods I found several crawling up my pantleg–which they are not supposed to do because those pants are treated with tick repellent. It was interesting to find them, though, because it is the first time in months that I have seen any ticks, and those four I saw yesterday may equal all the other ticks I saw this year.

I am still taking my break. Not doing bug walks every day. But I can't help being interested in the life around me. It's a fascinating world.

Taking a Break From My Break

 Okay, I realize that I JUST SAID that I was taking a break from blogging. But I also said I would post if I found something interesting. Now, I realize that that is a low bar, I find a tremendous amount of things interesting, that is why I am so very rarely bored. But I didn't do a bug walk today, I just stopped to look at my chrysanthemums when I went out to get the mail, because they are one of the bright spots in my world right now. And I found a bug there that was not one of the ones that have been there for the past week. So...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Plant bug, of the order Hemiptera. I wonder if it is feeding on nectar, or if it is simply sucking other fluids from the plant. The dark blur in the background is a sweat bee.

That's it. That's all I took pictures of today. I didn't even take pictures of the other sweat bees that were dining on the chrysanthemums. Because I am taking a break. 

That being said, am I hoping that tomorrow I see some kind of really amazing bug when I go outside? Yes.

An Interlude

 I've decided to take some time off from this blog. Given the time of year, I can't say for how long–we are approaching the time of year when it's too cold for bugs. That has not been the case the last few days, of course, but aside from the ones attracted to the chrysanthemums in the rock garden I haven't been finding many bugs anyway. That is part of the reason I am taking a break. This takes a lot of time, and it's not worth it if I end up with nothing to show for it. Most days I don't even have a Backyard Bug of the Day to show. I have other things I need to devote attention to, and so I am going to do that for the time being. If I happen to end up with a picture of a cool bug on some days, I'll post about it. I don't have much to post bug-wise today, but if you're not averse to snakes, stick around for the end of today's blog post.

 After not being seen for a few days, the march flies were back today:

 

Still only males, though.

 I found a strange situation:

It was hard for me to tell what was going on here. It was either two ants playing tug-o-war over another ant, or one ant dragging two ants. 

It got kind of extreme. These are not winter ants, by the way, but since the temperature has now been in the 70s for a few days, I guess the non-winter ants decided they could come back out.

As is now the case every day, most of the bugs I found, in fact, an overwhelming majority of them, were feeding on the chrysanthemums:

It was mostly sweat bees, lots of sweat bees. Every flower had at least once, with a few gnats thrown in here and there.

There were no hover flies today, but there was one stilt bug.

Backyard Reptile of the Day:

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Definitely a front yard reptile, not a backyard reptile, to be accurate. Here it is slithering under the front porch. Garter snake.

Two Bees, Or Not Two Bees

 It's a good thing that the chrysanthemums are blooming in my rock garden right now, or I wouldn't have found any bugs on my bug walk today. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, I have no idea why bugs weren't frolicking all over the place, but they weren't. So now enjoy a few pictures of bugs on pretty flowers:

Bugs for everyone! Three sweat bees (including the one on the flower in the background) and a hover fly.

Stilt bug

It is interesting that sometimes insects will share the flowers with no problem, but other times they will chase each other away. Like this progression of shots:

Two hover flies...

... one is supplanted by a sweat bee between clicks of the camera...

... and was eventually scared away by a larger sweat bee. The hover fly stayed, but gave the sweat bee a lot of space.

And that's it. I didn't find any other insects to photograph on my bug walk–in fact, I hardly saw any other insects at all. I didn't see even a single march fly. The only other pictures I took were of spiders, and because of the wind, those came out too blurry to post. I was so looking forward to these warm days, hoping the bugs would be out. But it's been just like this whole year–the bugs are just not there, and I don't know where they have gone.