How Low Can You Go?

I am now going to go back on one thing I said in my last post, and reiterate something else I said.

Today it was cold out.

 Here's the tiny bit of snow we got last night. Usually the sun would melt that away pretty fast, but it was so cold this morning that the snow, little as it was, lingered.

Last weekend the official high for my state was 70ºF (I don't think it got quite that high at my house). Well, today was like a completely different season; today the high was in the low 20s. Solidly below freezing. Not the kind of day I even consider doing a bug walk. However, curiosity is one of the hallmarks of my character, so when I went outside to get the mail, I couldn't resist checking out the rocks down near the street to see if the apricity and the microclimate were enough to coax some bugs into action for the day.

As it turns out, yes. Even on a day when the temperature is over ten degrees below freezing (it was 21ºF when I went outside), I was able to find some bugs. And they weren't just basking in a stupor in the sunshine, they were active, moving around, going about their tiny insect lives. And it wasn't just one, random outlier braving the cold, it was multitudes.

Of course, maybe this kind of behavior should be expected of a creature called a snow flea:

And maybe the same could be said about something called a winter ant, although from what I have read about them today should have been a bit too cold for them. And yet, there were a few wandering around on the rock. I put my hand on the rock to see how it felt, not sure if I was expecting it to feel warm or cold, and I would describe how it felt as cool. Not warm, but nothing like the frigid air. Obviously it was warm enough that for the insects crawling around on it it created a warm enough environment for them to be active on this freezing day.

And was we have long since discovered here on this blog, the bugs don't all go away just because it's winter. And yes, yes, I know, I said only a couple of days ago that I wasn't going to post if all I had to post was the same things over and over again, but this post wasn't really about the pictures. It was about the situation, showing that insect life goes on, even as the mercury goes down. Obviously there must be a low that is too low for them. But with enough sunshine, even temperatures below freezing aren't necessarily it.