Hello there. It's been a while–almost exactly a month. I am still on hiatus, and haven't been doing any bugs walks. That's not to say I haven't seen any bugs, although lately all I have seen are springtails (which I found frozen to the surface of the pond last week. I tried to take pictures, but they didn't come out), and, to my great surprise, predaceous diving beetles, which up until a couple of days ago I was still finding in the stream, despite the cold. It's possible they are still active there now, I just haven't seen them in a couple of days. The stream is flowing well, now that we are getting regular rain. But what we got last week was snow, and up until today the temperature has been down around freezing every day, so the snow has stuck around. Today was close to 40ºF, so the snow started to get a bit slushy, and it was obviously warm enough to bring out some bugs.
Backyard Bug of the Day:
Winter crane fly. I saw several of them on my woods walk today.
Backyard Bird of the Day:
I don't know what kind of bird this is, and I am not going to look it up. It's a bird of prey. It sat on this branch for quite a while. This tree is close to the bird feeder, so I thought maybe it was looking for a small bird to eat, but there were birds on the feeder and on the ground around it, and the predator didn't go after them, and they didn't seem to care that the predator was there.
I did see it looking down at the ground several times, but I could not tell what it might be seeing down there.
Note, by the way, that this bird is following Bird Law, and posing behind twigs so I can't get a clear shot.
Fluffing up and preening:
It seems to have lost its head.
Standing on one foot. You can just see the foot poking out of the feathers of its belly.
Cleaning its feet
Ruffly
Spotting something:
Time to launch:
It was a drop-and-swoop kind of takeoff. I don't think that it went after something on the ground, but since I was looking through the camera, I missed what happened after this moment.
Yesterday was the winter solstice, one of my least favorite days of the year. I love daylight. Today is the day that the days start getting longer again, which to me is definitely something to celebrate. It's unlikely that I will be posting again soon, so Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Oh, and I have not made any new calendars this year (Yet. It could still happen), but if you want any of my previous calendars, they are still available at my Zazzle Store. You can set the starting month of the calendars for any month you like. There are masks with my photos available, too, in case you have ever wanted a mask with real personality.
