Today I switched around my usual outdoor activities, going for my woods walk before my bug walk. I saw a lot of bugs in the woods, way more than I usually do, and not just because there were march flies everywhere. I saw more species than I usually do in the woods, including beetles, a crane fly, and some strange, tiny insect that often lands on my husband and me on our walks, but never sticks around long enough for me to figure out what it is. The march flies were all over the leaves of the many young beech trees alone the trails, and I thought this was a harbinger of success for my bug walk when I got back. There was even a mating pair (well, it was a trio), which gave me hope that I might finally find a female in my backyard, so I could show the sexual dimorphism of the species. When we were about a hundred feet from the house on the way back, I checked my watch. It was about ten minutes until two. My husband was adamant that the weather forecast was firm in its prediction that it would start raining at four o'clock. That gave me plenty of time to do my bug walk before the rain. Except that when I was about 95 feet from the house, having just made those time calculations in my head, I felt the first raindrop.
I did a partial bug walk anyway, an awkward one with an umbrella, because I was annoyed that the rain was early, because I couldn't do one yesterday because of timing and temperature, and because it was much warmer today, back in the 50s, and after seeing all of those bugs in the woods, I knew there had to be a lot of bugs around. March flies, in particular.
Well, I didn't find any march flies. And I didn't find much else, either. I guess all of the bugs are in the woods right now. The Backyard Bug of the Day was actually spotted by my husband was we walked out the back door to go on our woods walk.
Backyard Bug of the Day:
Woolly bear caterpillar, the caterpillar of the isabella tiger moth, crawling around on the back porch, on a spot that was still icy from the snow on Friday.
Other Bugs:
Not that you can tell from this picture, but a lot more of the aphids on the back porch tree have molted into adults with wings. The white objects are exuvia from aphids that have molted.
During our little cold snap the ants forsook the aphids, but today one was back.
A couple of large milkweed bugs were out walking around today, and if you look behind the one on the right, you will see a pair of wings that I did not notice when I took the picture. It appears to be an aphid.
Arachnid Appreciation:
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I watched as this spider slid down a silk thread from a tree branch into the leaf litter on the ground.
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