Longest Day

Happy Solstice! Where I live, of course, it is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and therefore one of my favorite days. I like a lot of daylight; one of the things I have loved in my travels is going to countries that are farther north, where the summer days are so long. And yet, one of the best things about summer when I was a kid was catching fireflies, which, of course, you can't do until it's dark. Well, actually, the best time to catch them is at dusk, because they are lighting up already, but it's easier to catch them if you can see them while they are not lit up. Also, it helps to be able to see where you are going when you run after them. I have caught them occasionally as an adult, but my backyard isn't the easiest place to catch them, having only paths around vegetation, instead of a vast open space of lawn. Not that I want such an ecological wasteland surrounding my house. But really, the difficulty of catching fireflies in my backyard now is that while the ones I caught during childhood flew at a low enough level for a child to catch them, the ones I see now tend to fly quite high, among the treetops. I don't know if that is because they are a different species than the ones we had where I lived as a child, or if it has to do with the particular environment of my backyard, which has more trees than lawn. It works out nicely for me, though, because I am not all that interested in chasing them now, but I do like to be able to stand out on my back porch and gaze at the stars and the fireflies at the same time. By the way, if you do have a lawn, and you want to have fireflies in your yard, you had best avoid using pesticides on your grass. Firefly larvae live underground, and pesticides kill them. No larvae, no adult fireflies. I am interested to see if after we clear the invasive plants in the field and return that to a wildflower meadow if that will lead to more fireflies. It is going to take a long time to find that out, but I hope that is what happens.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Some kind of beetle larva. I have never been able to find out what kind, even after asking other people who know a lot more about bugs than I do.

Other Bugs:

Beetle

Robber fly:

It was feeding on a long-legged fly

Bumblebee on milkweed blossoms

Lady beetle larva

Leaf beetle

Caterpillar pretending to be a twig

Arachnid Appreciation:
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Jumping spider

Bowl and Doily spider

Harvestman with mites