Winter Warmth

The Thaw continued today, warmer and NOT raining–fully sunshiny, in fact–so I was able to do a bug walk. Here's what I found:

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Some kind of Hemiptera nymph.

Other Bugs:

 Another Hemiptera, a plant bug, I think.

And a whole lot more Hemiptera:

 The candy striped leaf hoppers were out in great numbers today. I didn't get good pictures, because it was also really windy, and since there are still leaves on their tree, it really swayed in the wind, and they are too skittish to stick around if I try to steady the branch with my hand. But there are about a dozen in this shot, and there were at least this many more on the other end of this branch. And even more all over the tree. What was most interesting about them is that they were flying around a lot. I rarely see these fly at all. Being leaf hoppers, they tend to hop away if I disturb them, or just scoot around to the other side of their leaf or stem. But they were flying all over the tree. There is another tree of the same species near this one that is never as popular with the leaf hoppers, but they were out on that tree, too.

So much for that order, now a couple of representatives of the order Coleoptera:

 

 Twice-stabbed lady beetle

 

 Winter firefly. I looked for these yesterday and today; I didn't find any yesterday, and today I only found this one. I was surprised, because this is their kind of weather.

I saw a few winter ants:

 I didn't notice until I looked at this picture for about the third time on the computer, but there are snow fleas all over that rock.

 They were also all over this tree.

Springtails

I saw other bugs, too, that I couldn't get photos of, including mostly flies. And I was surprised not to see more, to be honest. No winter crane flies. I couldn't find the woolly bear caterpillar again. I was hoping to be surprised by something, but I wasn't.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Tiny jumping spider