Sometimes I just don't want to explain things, like the story about doing bug walks today. I walked around my backyard today, my regular backyard, looking for signs of spring. I think there usually are some by now, but I couldn't find so much as a single crocus leaf poking up out of the ground. Yes, I found some daffodils sprouting last week (I think. I have lost my sense of time) and the snowdrops have sprouted. But I feel like it should be a bit springier by now. But maybe that's the unusually warm weather making me think that. Anyway, having not found what I sought, I was walking up the front walk and saw Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:
Sing with me now–One of these things is not like the others... As you can imagine, I didn't notice this caterpillar at first, at least, not as a caterpillar. I noticed the fallen catkins from the black birch tree, and then it struck me that those weren't all catkins.
If I was a good blogger I would look this up, but I am a bad blogger, so I am not going to drag out my caterpillar book just yet.
I took two walks in the woods today, the first one for a picnic, because it was a gorgeous, picnicking kind of day, and the second one because I saw something interesting in the stream during my first walk, and I hoped, though did not expect, to be able to find it again if I went out with my camera. I did find it again, but I didn't know that until I looked at the pictures of something else I found. That probably sounds confusing, so I'll clear it up by showing you Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:
I think this might be a stonefly nymph. Even though stoneflies have been BBotD already this year/season, this qualifies to be BBotD because it is a different life stage. It's quite different from the adult in one important respect: it is aquatic. This is underwater, taken while I was lying face down on the mossy, damy ground, my camera just at the water's surface. I am guessing that it is a stonefly nymph based on the fact that I know their nymphs are aquatic, and because it looks like a wingless stonefly.
It is not, however, the interesting thing I saw in the water on my earlier walk. I couldn't find that again,, or so I thought, until I looked at my pictures and noticed something... specifically, Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:
Can you see it? I don't even know why I took this picture, what I thought I was taking it of–probably the stonefly nymph, that may have scooted out of range just as I took the shot. You can see the reflection of the ring light on my camera, that white curve at the side of the picture. But then when I looked at this on my computer, I noticed the strange insect larva or nymph, and realized that that was the thing I saw on my earlier walk. It's quite small, and it's not the easiest way to look at bugs, in the water, but here it is. And even funnier is, it's in several of the pictures I took:
It's not in good focus in most of them, because I was trying to take pictures of what I did see, the stonefly nymph...
... but it's there...
I don't know what it is. It might be another, earlier instar of the stonefly nymph. But it could also be a nymph or larva of some other insect, either totally aquatic or only aquatic in its early life stages, of which there are quite a number. It's ironic and a little annoying that I went out with my camera just to get pictures of this and came away disappointed... only to find out that I not only had pictures of it, but obviously had excellent opportunities to take better ones. Oh well. It's still cool to have seen it at all–this and the stonefly nymph are new sightings for me.
Also found in the stream, right near where I saw the above, were a couple of other aquatic youngsters:
Caddisfly larva in a sparkly, sand-and -tiny-pebble covered case
Another caddisfly larva in a case made out of... well, a variety of things: bits of leaves, something that looks like a seed or a bud, and... I can't tell what else. This one you can see its head poking out the end (the lower end from this point of view).
Here you can see legs, and a bit of the body.
Another view of the case
On my first walk, though my backyard was not forthcoming with signs of spring, I did find some in the woods:
There are signs of spring in the woods:
The skunk cabbage has a flower bud now.
I saw other bugs on both walks:
Winter firefly with snowfleas. I wonder if it was eating the snowfleas...
There are plenty of them. This is a tree where they like to hang out.
Meanwhile, it looks like the snowfleas are eating the lichen growing on the tree.
Crane fly swarm. This one's a bit of an eye test.
There are still stoneflies crawling around on tree trunks. After I took pictures of this one, I drew back and looked at it again, and saw that there was another one just above it, maybe two inches away. I aimed my camera, but before I could focus...
The upper stonefly rushed the other one, they had a tussle that lasted about a second, and one of them flew off. It was a dramatic and shocking moment.
I saw a couple of tiny spiders near each other on a tree sapling on my first walk, and tried to find them on my second walk. It turns out that it is harder than I thought it would be to remember which sappling I saw the spiders one. I only found one there when I finally identified it, and it would not pose for a photo. But I did find two other spiders, so here's Arachnid Appreciation:
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