Basking

 I was headed out into the woods to work on a project on this gorgeous March afternoon, sans camera, but I saw some bugs pretty much right as I entered the woods and decided to turn around and go back to the house to get my camera and take pictures of those bugs. At first I intended to then bring the camera back into the house, because I had a project to work on and didn't want to deal with the camera, but then I decided I was too lazy to walk back to return the camera, and brought it with me instead. And now, you get to see how buggy it was in the woods on this gorgeous March afternoon.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Winter firefly. A diurnal species (well, there may be more than one species) that is not bioluminescent in its adult form. They like to bask on tree trunks on warmer winter days–like today. Yesterday I don't think the temperature got above freezing. Today was at least 20 degrees (F) warmer. A perfect day for winter fireflies to be out soaking up some rays.

 And there were plenty of them out today:

There were more on this tree trunk, but I can only get so much in one shot.

In fact, it was, in general, a nice day for basking on tree trunks, as far as insects were concerned:

Winter stoneflies were sunning themselves, too. I guess now that there's no more snow (well, very little, anyway) for them to crawl on, they decided that being warm and toasty is nicer? They were on a lot of trees today. Most of them were pretty active, crawling around, so I wasn't able to get pictures of many. Not that I need that many pictures. But it's a compulsion when this is what you do.

And I found one tree with snow fleas on it:

There were hundreds, or maybe a thousand of them, most of them walking up the trunk. They were still there an hour or two later when I went by again.

 

Midge (male) on the picnic table

There were things swarming in the air today, too:

These are hard to see, but pretty when you find them: a swarm of winter crane flies.

 

You're going to have to strain your eyes for these; there was a swarm of some tiny insects over the stream...

And there were things on the stream:

Springtail on the surface of the stream. Sometimes it went along with the current, sometimes it sprung from place to place on the surface of the water.

Then a stonefly came floating by...

It flexed its wings, but did not fly.

Then I took a picture of a speck of something else on the surface, that turned out not to be anything interesting, but looking at the picture I think there is an insect underwater. It looks like a springtail, but it seems pretty large for that.

Spring is progressing very slowly, but the skunk cabbage in the stream has company now:

Yesterday these two sprouts were flanked with ice. You can see a tiny bit still in this picture, but with today being so much warmer, most of it melted.