A BEE! WHEE!

 At last! I found what I was looking for! The first bee of the year!

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Every day this week I have checked the crocuses, hoping to find any kind of bug at all, but really hoping to find a bee, and today, finally, I found one! Note the pollen grains stuck to its back.

When I first spotted it it was way down inside the flower. I was so happy to see those big bug eyes looking up at me!

That was it for bugs in my backyard, and though I saw a few when I took my camera on my woods walk, they were all on the wing, and so no pictures. But I did get this interesting shot:

In case you've ever wondered what's inside a skunk cabbage blossom, their reproductive organs look like a giant virus.

Morphologic Differences

 Happy Astronomical Spring!

Yes, I know the vernal equinox (for the northern hemisphere, which is where I am) was a couple of days ago, but I didn't find any bugs when I went out that day. My crocuses bloomed right on time for the first day of spring, though:

I am VERY happy to see these blooming in my backyard, especially since my snowdrops failed to bud at all. But I don't just go out looking for flowers, I go out looking for bugs, and it saddens and worries me that for three days now I have not found any bugs on the crocuses.

Now, for a wee lesson on sexual dimorphism, which is the differences in form between female and male insects. This lesson is courtesy of the midges that were swarming the porch light when I got home this evening. They were not at all cooperative, but I was able to get pictures of both female and male midges,  and their dimorphic characteristics are pretty amusing.

First, a female midge:

And a male:

Let's get a closer look at the salient parts: The Antennae:

The male looks like he's ready for Mardi Gras (and a few weeks late for that!).

Female:

Male:

My hypothesis (which I am not going to look up, although I am sure entomologists know the answer to this), is that the male has bigger antennae because they use them to sense pheremones or something from females in order to find mates. I think that is the case with moths, which are similar in that male moths have big, feather-like antennae and females have simpler antennae.

I tried to get a shot of a male and female together. You can see how that turned out.

On A Lovely Day

 In the spring, things are constantly changing, developing, progressing...

Like the hazelnut trees:

Look, now both the male and female flowers are blooming! Where is the female flower, you ask? At the very tip of the branch...

I did say they are very small and unobtrusive. There were several blooming today. I hope this means I will have some hazelnuts this year.

I don't know if I mentioned that we are now hearing the spring peepers at night. So I knew that frogs were active now, but I was still surprised to see this on my woods walk:

This is not a spring peeper. Just after this frog scooted into the water to get away from my camera, another one, which I had not seen, but was clearly sitting only a few inches away from this one, plopped in the water behind it.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I think this is a sawfly, which is a type of non-stinging wasp. Sawflies are the ones that have those creepy larvae (there are many species of sawfly, and many different kinds of creepy larvae...).

Other Bugs:

I spotted a winter firefly caught in an eddy in the stream. Fireflies are not aquatic insects; it was able to stay on top of the water because of surface tension, I think, but the water in that little nook was spinning the poor firefly around in circles, and I don't think it knew how to get out. I rescued it with my walking stick.

 

I did not notice at the time, because I wasn't able to get very close to it, but it was not alone; there was a springtail along for the ride. The springtail could easily skate on the surface of the water, but I have seen them sometimes grab onto something else and just get towed around, like it was doing here.

I always say the real law of nature is that if there is something to eat, there will be something to eat it:

There are candy striped leaf hoppers sunning themselves on this tree, and so there is an assassin bug there to take advantage of the bounty.

Ant on hazelnut catkin (male flower). I think this might be a winter ant. Today's high temperature in the 70s would have been hotter than they like, but this picture was taken near dusk, when it had cooled into the 60s, which is more to their taste.

I saw a few other species of bugs, and even photographed some of them, like the wasp that was interested in my lunch, and a rove beetle that was not prey to a spider, but none of those pictures were worth posting. I also saw the first mosquitoes of the year, after considering on my way out whether I needed protection from them and deciding it was too early. Not everything in the spring is a joy.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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The woods were full of spider webs with tiny spiders.

Many of the webs had prey caught in them. This spider was in the process of subduing a rove beetle, which was putting up a fight.

Green Cloud

 Ah, spring flowers...

Not what you had in mind? Well, aside from one creeping myrtle bloom, this is what I've got. These are male hazelnut flowers. Or catkins. If you have pollen allergies, it's not the showy, beautiful flowers that are your problem, no, those are pollinated by bees, and they have heavy, sticky pollen. What you have to worry about are male flowers that look pretty much like this. I accidentally bumped one and a cloud of pollen was released. Fortunately, I was upwind. My allergy shots don't contain hazelnut pollen. I don't know if I am allergic to hazelnut pollen, they don't test for that, but I am allergic to a lot of other tree pollens. Best to avoid breathing it in. The female flowers of the hazelnut tree are tiny and unremarkable... and I couldn't find any on either of my hazelnut trees. I hope they are there, and I am just not seeing them, because without the female flowers there will be no hazelnuts.

I did a partial bug walk in my backyard today–it was irresistible, because the temperature was in the mid-60s and it was gloriously sunny. Imagine my disappointment that this is the only bug I saw:

Springtail, I think.

Better look. It was scurrying along on this tree trunk. I spotted it while trying to take a picture of the spider, which was also scurrying, and since the spider was obviously afraid of me and trying to get away from the camera, it didn't see the springtail going the other direction. I did not get a picture of the spider at all.

So, the backyard bug walk was pretty much a failure, but I brought my camera on my woods walk, and had a little more success. Still, I expected to see A LOT of bugs today. I did not.

A year and a couple of days ago I found something interesting in the woods that I had never seen before. Now that I know it exists, I have been looking for it, though not quite remembering when I saw it, so not quite sure when I might be expected to find it. Today was the day.

Backyard Bugs of the Day:

Blackfly larvae. Last year when I first saw them I had no idea what they were. They are creepy little things. They cling to leaves under the flowing water, and grab at whatever washes by that looks edible. Last year I got a few closer pictures by taking some leaves out of the water, but I didn't feel like doing that today. If I did, most of these would let go of the leaf and get washed away in the current.

There were a couple of leaves by the bridge with the larvae on them.

I checked a lot of beech trees on my walk. This is the only candy striped leaf hopper that came out on this lovely day.

Many years ago I went on a spring wildflower walk held at a state forest and learned about spring ephemerals, which are flowers that bloom early in the spring for a brief time. Many of them are in woodlands, where the best time for them to bloom is before there are leaves on the trees, when they are getting a lot of sunlight. One of the plants I learned was a spring ephemeral is skunk cabbage, and they are one of the first plants to come to life in the spring, in wetland areas like swamps, or near streams. Last year I saw this plant in early spring and was excited for this sign of spring. But last fall I noticed this sprout in the stream, and realized that while the flower blooms early in the spring, the appearance of this bud wasn't really a spring thing. It's not blooming yet, and there's a lot of water in the stream at the moment. So far on the banks of the stream I have only seen one sprout so far.

Swarm of winter crane flies.

If I had scrounged through the leaf litter today I may have found a few sleepy bugs hiding. There are things stirring under there on their own, and this is an excellent time to spot spiders on the leaf litter, no doubt hunting for all the things hiding under there. Like this lovely for Arachnid Appreciation:

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First jumping spider of the year! On the side of the house.

Spider on the picnic table in the woods.