Nocturnal and Aquatic

 Even if I only have my phone with my to take pictures, it would be a lot easier for me if I could find bugs on my walks during daylight hours, but no, I only see them at night, when I am walking by flashlight. I have begun to think that the water beetles and caddisfly larva are nocturnal, or at least more active at night, but the only bugs I saw on my daylight hike today were a couple of crane flies. On my night hike I saw, in addition to the possibly-nocturnal aquatic insects, a stonefly (wait, now that I think about it, I think I did see one of those during the day), a springtail (oh, also saw those during the day, but not in places I could take pictures. And a different species than the one I saw at night), and...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Tiny caterpillar, a looper, climbing up the trunk of a tree. Certainly not a common sight in January, even on a day in the 40s (though it was down into the 30s when I spotted this), but not unprecedented. And this has been quite a mild winter so far.

The water level was down a bit in the stream today, and it was not flowing as strong, which made it a little easier to look for aquatic insects, but I only found them in one pool (the same one from yesterday). Today there were a lot of beetles, and a couple of caddisfly larvae:

This caddisfly larva had an interesting case, with what looked like part of a second case attached to the side of it.

Beetle AND caddisfly larva in the same shot! I know you can see the beetle, can you find the caddisfly larva?

The larva's head is poking out...

And again...

And again...

Arachnid Appreciation:

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This was a busy tree trunk–I saw this spider, and then the springtail (didn't get a usable picture), then the stonefly (ditto). This is the tree where I have seen stoneflies on other walks lately.