Today, a nice, warm, summery autumn day, I give you…
Backyard Bug of the Day:
Winter firefly. Which, in spite of the name, is not exclusive to winter. Nor does it light up like other fireflies; it is diurnal (active in the daytime).
The leaves are starting to change color, but on a lot of the trees, due to the drought, they are just shriveling up and falling off:
The normal pattern is: change color, fall off tree, dry up on the ground. The current pattern is: dry up, fall off tree. It is mostly saplings and other smallish trees that are doing this, but there are a lot of them. According to the drought maps, we are in severe drought, while other parts of the state are in extreme drought, but I think we have actually gone that next step into extreme drought. I have never seen this happen, even in other years when we have had drought. A lot of other plants are wilted and drying up, like goldenrod and creeping myrtle (and bittersweet, but since that is invasive I don't care). It's worrisome. And I have been wondering if the drought is at all responsible for the low numbers of insects I am seeing this summer. Particularly for insects that feed on fluids from plants it cannot be good that the plants are suffering from lack of water. And this stresses the trees and leaves them vulnerable to disease and insect attacks from things like gypsy moth caterpillars. One reason so many trees died in the most recent gypsy moth outbreak is because they were already stressed from two years of drought (though that drought was not as severe as this). It is strange that I am personally so stressed out right now and the trees around me are also in distress. I wish I could help them, but I can't water a forest, or even my entire backyard.
Due to time constraints I had to rush through my bug walk today, but even so, I didn't find a lot of Other Bugs:
Large milkweed bug on a leaf that has actually changed color
Jagged ambush bug. I don't think it appears so in photos, bu these really do blend in well on the goldenrod plants.
Assassin bug with what looks like a sweat bee prey
Arachnid Appreciation:
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Goldenrod crab spider (I think)
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