A Buggier Day

 On Monday I didn't do a bug walk because it was too cold. On Tuesday I did a bug walk, but I didn't find anything worth blogging about. Third day's the charm; today was a better day for a bug walk, and the bugs agreed. I found out on my way to get the mail when I walked through a swarm of bugs, and then found another on the porch on my way in. And, there's this:

The buds were damaged by the snow last week, but we've been making sure to cover the chrysanthemums every night when there's a frost, and at least some of the flowers seem to have survived, and will hopefully bloom in the next few days. Whether there are any pollinators left to appreciate them, I don't know. But I am happy to have the flowers. 

 Also, I heard crickets on my bug walk today. I haven't heard them in a few days. I even heard them this evening when I went out to look at the sky. This will be the first night in about a week that it has not threatened to freeze.

 Backyard Bug of the Day:

I think these are fruit flies.

I tried to get a picture of both of them in focus at the same time, but they weren't keen on my presence in the thorn bush where they were.

Other Bugs:

This is the bug I found on the front porch. It was dangling from a thread on the wind chime, and climbing up. If it decided to hide inside the wind chime, I don't think it is going to like it when the wind blows.

 

 

 

The swarm I walked through was male march flies:

I went in to get my camera right away, but by the time I got back, the swarm had dispersed. I saw several small insect swarms today; I think one of them was winter crane flies, but I think the others were march flies. From what I understand, the females rest on the ground or on leaves, and the males swarm, keeping an eye out for mates. Don't use this information as a source if you are writing a report about march flies, because I don't know for sure it that is correct. Anyway, even though I saw a few swarms, I had a hard time finding march flies on a surface so I could photograph one. I still only saw males. This one...

I am absolutely incapable of identifying ants by species, but I do wonder, given that even today's much milder temperature did not reach 60ºF, if this is a winter ant, a species that spends the summer well below ground where it's cool, and only comes up when the temperature drops into the cooler autumn range.

 Candy-striped leaf hoppers were out in great numbers today, basking on leaves, mostly on beech, but these are on wild cherry:

And this ant and leaf hopper are on a winged euonymous.

To give you a sense of how generally buggy the day was, note the tiny gnat on this leaf with the leaf hoppers.

Leafhoppers and crane fly

 

 

I found another species of leafhopper, too.

There are only a couple of leaves left on the back porch tree, and the number of aphids on them has dwindled a great deal, particularly the tiniest ones, but I think that is because they have gotten bigger. This time of year, from what I understand, instead of giving birth to live young, they will lay eggs, which will overwinter and hatch in the spring.

 

Bristletail on the side of the house

 

It seems like I either find no spiders or a whole bunch of spiders, but that is probably because they like the same kind of conditions, and there are just a lot of them in my backyard. So if it is good spider weather, lots of spiders come out. If it's not, none of them do. Arachnid Appreciation:

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Goldenrod crab spider. I saw this one descending onto this leaf on its silk thread. That action used to be one of the things that creeped me out about spiders, but now I find it enchanting, and I love when I see it (except when the spider is using it to escape my camera).
 

I read somewhere once that spiders don't eat ants because ants' formic acid defense is so effective against spiders. Obviously, this is not true. This is the second time in a couple of weeks that I have seen a spider feeding on an ant.

I found this one on the back screen door as I was about to go back into the house.