Nocturnal Aquatics

 I went for another after-dark bug walk tonight, because I went for a nighttime walk last night and saw a lot of insects in the stream, and wished I had my camera with me. Tonight I didn't see as much, and I didn't get many pictures that were good enough to post, but it is still very cool to see so many interesting things in the water, active in the dark.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I don't know what kind of larva this is (possibly a damselfly larva), and I am not even sure that I haven't made it BBotD already. I don't feel like going back to check, because I am a lazy blogger, and it's so interesting.

If you look carefully, there are a couple more in this shot. There were several of them in this spot, on two rocks covered in moss, with the current washing over them.

Our path in the woods follows the stream, but not right beside it for much of the length, just because the lay of the land or the rockiness and wetness make it hard to walk close to the water. There are a few spots, though, where we can divert from the path to go to the edge of the stream to enjoy the beauty of it, and to look at what's living in it. I have a few spots where I check for bugs (and now salamanders). Yesterday most of those spots had lots of bugs in them. Tonight almost all of the bugs I saw were in one spot, an area that is part pool, part water rushing over mossy rocks. Subtle changes in location can be big changes in habitat for something tiny that lives in the water. And yet, all of the spots that I check are places where I have seen caddisfly larva in recent months, and, indeed on my night hike yesterday. Today I only saw them in two spots.

This one has a case made of leaves on the top, unusual in my limited experience because the leaves are flat, and not curled around the case:

I am pretty sure I saw this exact specimen last night, too. I didn't get a glimpse of the insect itself, or of the rest of the case, so I don't know what it looks like on the other side. I think it's interesting that it is obviously made of several different kinds of leaves.

You can only see two here, but there was another just out of frame. In this part of the stream there were rather a lot of them, and they were really active, moving around a lot, and pretty quickly:

 Unfortunately, though there were a couple more species to be seen, the combination of low light, moving insects, and flowing water to distort the image made the pictures unusable. But not every insect I saw on my walk was aquatic:

Actually, this sow bug isn't even an insect. Or a bug, by strict definitions. But it is an arthropod, specifically, a terrestrial crustacean. More closely related to a lobster than an insect.

This is an insect, of course. A moth, order Lepidoptera. Its mottled color makes it look a bit like lichen on tree bark.

This might not be exactly the right kind of tree for it to blend in perfectly, but it is still not so easy to spot:

Arachnid Appreciation:

Tools For Success

 One thing life has taught me is that every task is easier if you have the proper tools to do it. But it has also taught me that you have to work with the tools you have sometimes, and make the best of it.

So, if you're out in the woods with your camera, and you have a zoom lens on it instead of a macro lens with a ring flash, and you see an interesting beetle as the evening is heading toward night, then you're just going to have to take a picture of the beetle with a zoom lens in the fading light and try to get the best picture you can.

Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day:

I think the larger one is a checkered beetle. The smaller one I didn't notice while I was taking the pictures, but since it's there, I feel it should be Backyard Bug of the Day, too. These were on the stump of a tree that snapped during one of our many windstorms over the winter. I think that even though most of the tree is gone, the stump is still running sap, and these could be feeding on sap (or the wood, or other bugs, or...).

I did a cursory bug walk today, finding a surprisingly small number of bugs. Here's the only one I was able to photograph:

The lady beetle was still on the same flower where I last saw it, but today it was inside.

 Edit: I forgot that while we were doing trail work this afternoon a woolly bear caterpillar wandered across the path:

In the woods I found this dead tree branch with insect damage; it would have been under the bark of the tree, but the bark has fallen away. I didn't notice at the time, but it looks like there is a beetle in the upper right of the picture.

There are more signs of spring in the backyard:

Leaves opening on the crabapple tree

Bluets

As I said, the sun was setting as we walked homeward after spending some time in the woods.
 

Arachnid Appreciation:

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I did not find the spider who owned this tiny web, but it was so adorable I had to take a picture of it anyway. Scale is impossible to tell in pictures sometimes; this web is only about an inch across. 

There are a lot of tiny spiders in the woods lately.

Amphibious

 Today was an exciting day in the backyard, bearing in mind that it doesn't take much for nature to make me happy. I sometimes post Backyard Amphibian of the Day pictures here, and they are invariably of frogs or toads. I have found a variety of frogs and toads in my backyard, even if you only count my longtime backyard, and not my new woods. But frogs and toads are not the only amphibians that exist.

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:

 

A salamander!

I spotted it in the stream. I don't know the species, or if it is in the water just to lay eggs, or recently achieved adulthood, or if it is always in the water... I have seen two other salamanders in my backyard in the last 22 years, and none in the time frame of my macrophotography and blogging. I didn't have my camera with me on my walk, so I had to use my phone for pictures.

And video:

Of course, the closer video I got, without the reflection on the surface of the water, it didn't move:

 

 

Yesterday (was it yesterday? I have no sense of time anymore) I posted pictures of flowers blooming in my backyard, flowers I planted as bulbs over twenty years ago. In the woods, though, wildflowers are blooming:

It's still just the skunk cabbage, but it's such an interesting flower that it's enough for me for now.

Different Vision

 Different people see the world differently, I believe. I don't mean opinions, like whether a glass is half full or half empty. I mean people literally see different things, different people will look at the same scene and notice different things about it, and some will immediately see things that others would never notice are there.

A typical person would look at this and see a bunch of pretty crocuses blooming:

A person who is interested in bugs will see the shadow on a petal on the flower on the right...

... and look for what is hiding there. 

As you can see, spring has sprung in my backyard. Crocuses are blooming, and as I always say, if there is something to eat, there will be something to eat it:

Gnat feeding on a crocus. (I have no idea what the lady beetle was feeding on).

And in Arachnid Appreciation...:

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... on a thread dangling from the back porch light, a spider feasted on another spider. The prey is a jumping spider, which made me a little sad because I like jumping spiders the best, but I really shouldn't play favorites. It is interesting to note that the jumping spider is quite a bit bigger than the spider that captured it. Also, it looks like the jumping spider has prey of its own that it was feeding on before it was captured, but it's hard to really see.

Signs and Firsts

 Even though spring arrives slowly in fits and starts, there are definitely days that feel like it has arrived for good, and encouraging signs and harbingers. Like hearing frogs today. Or my first sighting of a bee and a butterfly this year.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Mourning cloak butterfly. Mourning cloaks overwinter as adult butterflies, hiding in wood piles or other sheltering spots and coming out when it warms up. This one is in good shape; usually their wings look pretty battered when they emerge in the spring. I had to take this picture with my phone because I was out in the woods doing trail work and building stairs out of stone, and it wasn't the kind of activity that is conducive to having a camera around. I was working on digging a spot for a stair when I saw this flutter down to the ground from nearby. Mourning cloaks rarely let me get close enough for a good picture, and this one was no exception. This picture was taken with my phone camera zoomed in, and when I tried to get closer it flew away. Still, I was thrilled to see it.

I didn't get a picture of the bee that I saw; it was on the trunk of a tree and flew away only about a moment after I spotted it. I was thrilled to see it, too.
 

Rite of Spring

 I didn't do a bug walk today, in spite of the fine weather, and I didn't bring my camera when we went to the woods, because we were working there today, instead of just walking for leisure. What I have to post is a celebration of the first day of springtime in the northern hemisphere. I know that the crane flies in this video are not actually performing a rite of spring, but they always look like they are doing a dance of joy, so here you are, jubilations on the Vernal Equinox:

It may still look like winter, and will for some time, but spring has arrived.

Weird Things in the (Clean) Water

 I saw something weird last night when we went on our walk just after dark, and this evening decided that it was worth bringing my camera out to get pictures. Not being an entomologist, I see a lot of insect-like things that I can't identify, but having spent as much time as I have looking at and learning about insects, I have picked up enough information to at least guess about a lot of them. These weird things, though, were really confounding. However, I did know enough about them to pick the right search terms to find out what they were, eventually.

Backyard Bugs of the Day:

These, I now know, are blackfly larvae.

When we spotted them last night, this is what we saw. There were several leaves in the stream, underwater, in a spot where the water was flowing over them rather strongly; there are places in the stream that are somewhat still pools by comparison, but this was a place where the water was rushing. It was by one of the bridges, and I knelt down on the bridge to get as close a look as I could, but they are tiny, and I couldn't really tell much about them, other than they looked like larvae of some kind, and they were anchored to the leaf on one end, while their other ends were obviously being tugged by the flow of water over them, waving in the current the same way the mosses and algae do. Today when we went out, we did not see as many, at first, at least not in the exact spot where they had been. The leaves there did not have as many as last night, and my husband was having trouble spotting them, so I poked one of the leaves with a stick to point it out to them, and when I did so, most of the larvae on it curled themselves up in balls and let go, allowing themselves to be taken away by the stream. I found this leaf, though, and went back to get my camera from the house. After I took shots of the leaf in the water, as you see here (you can tell which way the water is flowing, I am sure), I carefully lifted the leaf out of the water onto the bridge for close-up shots. I knew I was going to need close shots to figure out what they were.

They didn't like being out of the water, but they couldn't really go anywhere, I don't think. They moved a bit, but it is obvious that they need the flow of water to really move somewhere. I took some pictures and then put the leaf back in the water. When I did, the stream took the leaf, and many of them curled up and rolled off. From pictures I found when I looked them up it appears that they will be just as happy attached to a rock somewhere, and the stream has plenty of those. My guess was that they anchor themselves to something, and they catch things to eat as the water flows past them, and when I looked that up (after I figured out what they were), the internet confirmed that that is what they do.

They're kind of creepy looking to me. If the warm weather is what brought them out, then I think they are going to find the coming week rather trying. Another thing that I read about them is that they are biotic indicators–if they are found in a stream, the water is clean. I don't really know what clean means in this context, other than probably not polluted by human activities and all the nasty things that people dump in waterways. I don't know the source of my stream because it originates somewhere not on my property, but it is good to know that it is clean enough for these apparently finicky creatures.

Today was at least twenty degrees colder than it's been the last few days. The number of insects to be seen on our walk dropped accordingly. These are the only pictures I took.

Day and Night Bugs

 I went on two bug walks today. The first was in the afternoon, and I not only went over my usual bug walk areas in my backyard, but into the woods, too, checking out ponds and streams for interesting living things. Then I did another bug walk after dark, bringing my real camera with its ring light and a photography assistant (my husband) with a very bright flashlight to illuminate my subjects. Both walks were quite enjoyable, with sunshine and 68ºF in the afternoon, and a pleasant evening later. I found a goodly number of bugs by both day and night. Winter might be planning a comeback next week, but today it was spring, and there were bugs out enjoying it.

It's funny, though, that I am so often successful in taking photographs of the tiniest things living in my backyard, but have such a difficult time getting pictures of the largest animals. Here's a rare photo for me:

Usually when I see deer in the woods I find out that they are there because I have frightened them into fleeing; I notice them when they go bounding away, much more noisily than you might expect. They blend into the woods extremely well. That's how I saw these two, too, but being so far away from me, they didn't go far at first, just moved away until they saw that I was walking in a direction that was not toward them. They stood and cautiously watched me for a while, and then calmly walked away.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Wasp

Backyard Bug of the Night:

I think this is a ground beetle. Interestingly, I found two of them. Both of them were spotted by my husband, so I will give credit where credit is due. They were not in proximity to each other. I wonder how many of them are out there now, wandering over the 35 or so acres of woods in the dark, mild night...

So, what else did I see today ( and tonight)? Quite a decent number of Other Bugs:

Okay, there's no bugs here. For some reason I found it amusing that the two birch catkins are still in the same spot on the front walk, but their doppleganger, the caterpillar, was no longer there, because, of course, a caterpillar can walk away, but birch catkins cannot. However, further down the walk...

 

... I found the caterpillar. I am a little surprised, if it's the same caterpillar, that it is still hanging around two days later. There's nothing for it to eat on the stone front walk. Also interesting is that I walked by at the end of my night walk and it was still out on the walk, but had moved again.

Winter ant. I saw them here and there on my walk. There was one tree that had several of them up too high for me to photograph, but mostly they were out on their own.

I saw snowfleas on  this rock where they like to gather, and a lot of trees:

But it wasn't just winter insects today:

I have come to think of twice-stabbed lady beetles as a sign of spring. I saw a couple of them today.

I've kept an eye out on milder, sunny days for candy striped leaf hoppers on their favored tree species, because in past winters I have found them on such days, but not so this winter. I finally found a few today.

 

Winter fireflies were out and about, and many of them were active, instead of just sitting on tree trunks, so I got shots of their heads, which I don't usually see because they keep them tucked under their pronota when they are at rest:

The small pond is a dynamic environment, different almost every day. It's size changes, swelling and shrinking based on when we last had rain, and how much. There are grass-like plants growing in it, and lots of other organic debris floating on or clogging it. Right now there is a coating of what looks like pollen. It's a disgusting soup, but I have lately realized that it is teeming with tiny, living things. Unfortunately, the water is low now, and there's a muddy space around the edge that keeps me from getting a good look in the water. But today I spotted this:

There could be a thousand living things in this picture, but the one I took it for is the big water beetle in the middle.

A good look at how it uses its legs like oars.

The stoneflies are feisty lately. I missed the exciting moment, but the stonefly charged at and briefly tangled with the winter firefly as the latter walked up the tree trunk.

Midge, female

Tiny fly attracted to sap on a tree trunk

The big pond was full of life:

There's A LOT going on here.

Some kind of larva...

 

But it's not alone:

I don't know what any of this is, except the beetle. 

 

The trees in and around the pond were dripping sap into the water:

Stonefly caught in a tiny eddy in the stream

 

 

Caddisfly larva:

The distortion is due to the fact that I took the picture through water that was flowing.

 

Those are the bugs I saw during the day. Now for the bugs I saw at night:

I found the big beetle in the small pond again, but this time instead of zooming all around, as it had done during the day, it just sat near the surface of the water.

 

Meanwhile, in the big pond...

It doesn't look like much, but it is alive, and moving, and there were a lot of them there, among the many other things swimming around.

Have fun spotting some aquatic insects and other arthropods:

One of the larger species of springtail

I found these beetles on several trees.

One of the reasons I went for my night walk was to see if there would be moths attracted to the tree that was oozing sap again. There was very little sap today, but there were moths. Several of them dropped to the ground when we approached and shone our flashlights on them:

There were several species on the tree trunk:

 Meanwhile, in the stream:

Really long caddisfly case, with the larva's head sticking out.

Look near the upper edge of the picture, toward the left. There is some other kind of larva there. Because it is so close to the edge of the picture I couldn't get the magnifier to show it well, but it's kind of interesting looking.

 Arachnids I DON'T Appreciate:

Ticks. I killed them before the insect-repelling pants could work on them.

I saw a LOT of spiders today, different species, and in different situations. Arachnid Appreciation:

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With the warm weather this week, spiders that prowl in the leaf litter have come out into the open:

There were also tiny spiders all over the backyard and woods:

 

Mite

I found this spider under some coyote poop. I swear the reason for that is not as gross as it sounds. That is some of the poop on the right and bottom of the picture.

I found this spider on a rock by the small pond on my night walk.

I spotted my first snake of the season. Backyard Reptile of the Day:

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An immature snake. This was the best look I got of it as it slowly disappeared. I don't know what kind it was.