It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's A... Bug.

I don't mention this a lot, but most days when I am out in the backyard, even if it's a day when I say (hyperbolically) that I couldn't find any bugs, I will see at least a few bugs flying around. I don't really count them, because I can't take pictures of them, and on the days when I have trouble finding bugs, there usually aren't a lot flying around either. The thing about bugs that you see flying around is that it is very, very difficult to even guess what they are. Bugs often look totally different when they are flying than they do when they land. There are a lot of things that look like gnats in the air, that when they land, turn out to be something totally different. Or moths - a lot of things look like moths that are not moths, and not even similar to moths when you really get to look at them.

So today, there were a lot of little things flying around. Obviously, the smaller a bug is, the harder it is to tell what it is when all you see is a blur of tiny wings. And today I didn't find a lot of bugs, and was desperate enough to find something interesting that when I saw what I thought was a few gnats hovering around, I stood and waited (patience!) until one landed so I could at least get a picture of a gnat. One finally landed (very close to the ground, curse the little beast! Why doesn't anything ever land at my eye level?), and I crouched down to get a picture, but before I even got close with the camera I realized that it wasn't a gnat. Did I mention a while back when I listed all the bugs that I have not seen this year that I have not seen any rove beetles? I like rove beetles, and one of the things I like about them - well, THE thing I like about them, basically, is the way they put their wings away when they land. They have very short elytra, the hard coverings that go over their wings when they are not flying, and when they land and put their wings away they curl up the back of their abdomens to tuck the wings under the short elytra. I don't know why I find this so charming, but I do. So when I saw this tiny, tiny bug lift up its back end to tuck away its tiny wings, I knew that I had finally found a rove beetle. A very, very small rove beetle. And because I have not seen one at all this year, guess who gets to be Backyard Bug of the Day?

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Rove beetle

Random Bugs:

 It was only 51ºF outside when I went for my bug walk, and I figured it was too cold to find hoppers, but there were a few out there!

 Candy striped leaf hopper

 That's a candy striped leaf hopper on the other side of this leaf, but you're going to have to just take my word for it.

 Springtail.

I did have a look at some leaf litter today, but other than a hopper that I saw land on a leaf (which then hopped away before I could get a picture), I did not find any bugs this time.

This is a picture of a centipede, which is not a bug - not even an insect - inside my bug vacuum. Late last night, so late it was actually today, I saw one of these creatures zoom past the couch. I am totally creeped out by centipedes. I know that they are harmless to humans, and they are considered beneficial because they eat other bugs, so having them in your house means they will eat other bugs that get in there, but I don't care, I don't like them, and I have spiders for that. I resisted the urge to squish it, however, and sucked it up in the bug vacuum. I didn't feel like going outside to release it, though, and figured it could wait until morning. Then a little while later I saw ANOTHER one go past, and sucked it up, too. Well, this morning one of them was dead. My guess is that one killed the other. I feel bad about that, because I knew they were predators, I just didn't think they would prey on each other - they seemed fine when I was watching them in the vacuum's tube together. This is the one that lived, obviously:

 Anyway, I released the live one in the yard today. Yick.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Haven't seen a jumping spider in a while. This one was on the front porch when I went out to get the mail.

This one was in my living room this evening. I wonder what would have happened if the spider had met one of the centipedes...

Leave the Leaves

There was a news story making the rounds of the media recently about the National Wildlife Federation urging people not to rake the leaves on their lawns. The reason they wanted people to leave the leaves was because there is a lot of life in a leaf pile; a lot of insects use leaf litter as food and as shelter for overwintering, or as a place to pupate, and other reasons I can't recall. Do it for the butterflies, the articles said, in essence, because a lot of caterpillars chrysalize in leaf litter. Moths do, too. And if you don't care about the Lepidoptera, maybe think about the birds that would be eating them in the spring. There are animals other than insects who use leaf litter as habitat, too, like salamanders and chipmunks (so says the NWF. And I did see a chipmunk dive under some leaves the other day). So if you rake up the leaves and burn them, or put them in a plastic bag, or chop them up with a lawnmower, you are killing the things that are living there, or at least destroying their homes. Better, we are told, to rake them into your flowerbeds, if you can't stand to leave them on the lawn. That is basically what we do here; my husband blew the leaves off the paths and the small lawn area of the backyard into the meadow and woodland areas where they can stay there and provide homes for whatever wants to be there.

This idea of leaf litter as a safe harbor for arthropod life came home to me today on my bug walk. It was a fairly warmish (for November) day, in the high 50s, and I was having trouble finding any bugs. Then I happened to see a bug on a leaf by the side of the path. When I bent down to look at it, I saw a spider nearby. Then I saw another bug (which you will soon see as Backyard Bug of the Day). And another. And in looking at my pictures later, found another. I found all of these insects and arachnids in an area of less than one square foot. And they were only the ones on top of the leaf litter, who knows what may have been underneath?

You never want to jump in another leaf pile again, do you?

Anyway, I was impressed by what I found there. The very essence of why we should leave the leaves.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Springtail

 It was tiny, and kept moving, so I don't have any really good pictures, but I think from the ones I will post you can figure out what it looks like. To give you a sense of how small it is, it's about the size of this letter I. Maybe smaller.

 Here I was photobombed by another springtail of a different kind. Can you spot it (it's a totally different shape).

 The color was different depending on the angle of the light. Sometimes it was gold, somethings it was blue.

So, what else was in the leaf litter?

 This wasp (I think) was the first bug I spotted. I almost didn't bother to bend down to look at it or take its picture, because I thought it was just a fly. I am glad I did.

 A tiny hopper.

Random Bugs:

 Another hopper, on a leaf that it still clinging to a vine.

 A totally unexpected find today.

 Can you see that the looper is making a silk thread? (I have no idea why).

 I found a really nice swarm again today. Lots of bugs, and they were so charming in the way they flew together, bobbing up and down in the air like they were Cirque du Soleil performers on bungees.

 Then I stepped too close, and they all seemed to disappear. I looked closer and saw that they had all just immediately landed on the ground. Of course, when I got too close to them where they were on the ground, they would fly to a new spot. So, I stepped back, and they all sprang into the air again and went back to their bobbing. Just to test them, I stepped close again, and about half of them landed, and the other have moved as a group so they were to the side of me instead of in front of me. They were fascinating.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 The spider from the leaf litter.

Spider on a tree trunk. Remember about a week ago I posted pictures of that spider that I would see every day on the same tree trunk, and that day was the first day I saw it move? That was also the last day I saw it at all. But this is the same kind of spider, on a different tree.

How To Write About Backyards

I read some advice about writing once that said you should never start a story with a description of the weather. There was no justification for this rule, it just said you should never do it. Perhaps it was because of the most famously bad opening sentence of a novel, "It was a dark and stormy night," (which it is right now, by the way), from the novel Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, although it is probably better known as the way Snoopy starts all of his novels when he writes on a typewriter on top of his doghouse in Peanuts cartoons. It was also the first line of A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L'engle (and no, I didn't remember that on my own, I just read it somewhere when I looked up the line for what is coming next). People constantly revile that line as bad writing, although I quite like it, but what I think most people don't know is that that is not the entire line. It's not even close to the entire line, and when you know the entire line it makes a lot more sense that it is considered so awful that there is an annual bad writing contest for horrible opening lines to novels, called the Bulwer-Lytton prize. Here it is:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

 Yep, it's awful. It's awful layered upon awful. So why am I bringing this up? Because I was thinking today about that advice not to start a story with a description of the weather, when that is exactly how I start my blog a lot of the time. Now, I don't think the rule (and I am not a big follower of rules anyway, especially when there is no justification given for it) applies to something like a blog, it's supposed to apply to fiction. My blog is not fiction. What my blog is, though, is an account of what happens in my backyard, and the weather is something that happens in my backyard. It also happens to have a great effect on what else happens in my backyard, affecting not only the wildlife that might be seen there, but also whether or not I get to go out in the backyard looking for that wildlife on any given day.

Did I mention that it is a dark and stormy night? Well, the forecast for today was this: drizzly rain starting in the afternoon, real rain later in the afternoon, and heavy rain tonight. It wasn't raining when I read the forecast in the newspaper, but it was very dark and gloomy (and warmish - we flirted with 60ºF today! We only got to 58ºF, but still...), so even though I don't believe in forecasts, I do believe my own observations, so I decided to move Bug Walk to the head of the line for things I needed to do today. What often happens on days like today is that it starts raining the moment I am about to go outside. This is not fiction; this happens to me a lot. But today it didn't. It didn't start to rain until I was already outside, at the point in the yard that is farthest from the house. And it wasn't drizzle, either, it was real rain. My camera is 'weatherproof,' but that doesn't mean I want it to get soaked, so I stuck it under my shirt and sped through the rest of my bug walk and went inside. And it stopped raining. I didn't bother going back out, though. There weren't any bugs to go back out for.

Okay, there were two bugs.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I know I have posted these recently, but today, it's Backyard Bug of the Day. I still don't know what it is, but I am guessing an aphid or a psyllid.

And, a March fly.

Yep, that's it. I saw one other bug, a gnat, and that's all the bugs in the backyard today - that I could see. I didn't even hear any crickets when I was out this afternoon, although they were singing enthusiastically later in the evening (the temperature, by the way, dropped into the high 40s in the late afternoon, and rebounded to 58ºF in the evening, and now, it's even warmer, 59.7ºF, albeit it is now tomorrow, and I am just pretending that it is still today. That doesn't make any sense, but just go along with it. So there. I am ending the blog with talk about the weather, too).

Gnawing

It's late, my head hurts, I don't know what to say...

There were not a lot of bugs around today. The temperature was in the low 50s, which is certainly warm enough for bugs, but I think the fact that the overnight low being 21ºF might have had something to do with the scarcity. I was outside in that cold last night for about half an hour, watching for meteors. I saw a few, but not really enough to make sitting outside in such cold temperatures worth it. I mean, there was frost on my chaise lounge. And what is frost? Ice. I was sitting on ice.

Needless to say there were no crickets to be heard last night. There were none to be heard this afternoon, either, but the one thing that I could hear loud and clear in the absence of cricket song, was the sound of a squirrel gnawing on nuts of some kind, about 50 feet up in a tree. It almost hit me with some of the pieces of shell it dropped. I was amazed at how well I could hear the gnawing, but when there's no bugs, and nobody in the neighborhood is running a lawn mower or a leaf blower, and it's not windy, it is amazingly quiet in the backyard. Well, if you can ignore the sounds of the cars on the highway a half mile away.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 A gnat with pretty wings. It flew away before I could get closer.

I did see one swarm of March flies:

 Quite a big swarm, too. Well, they are never very big, compared to insects that swarm in the millions, these are more like ten most of the time, but this was a bigger swarm than usual.

 Hmmm... I actually got a pretty clear shot of one of them... It's hard when there's no sunshine.

 Here's the zoomed-in view.

 Ant.

Cranefly attracted to the porch light, as seen through the storm door.

Patience or Perseverance?

Something that people frequently say to me after looking at my pictures of bugs is, "You must have a lot of patience." I usually tell them that it doesn't take patience so much as perseverance to take picture of bugs. Patience implies waiting, something I do not do well. Perseverance is more about continuing to go after something, even when you're frustrated that you're not getting it.

I thought about this today as I was trying to get a picture of the Backyard Bug of the Day. I wasn't on my bug walk when I spotted it, I was on my way to get the mail. I had just stepped off the bottom step of the front porch when I saw a dragonfly zoom by and hover a bit over the front yard, low to the ground. It zipped back and forth a few times, and I zoomed inside to get my camera, hoping that when I came back out it would still be there. But when I got back with my camera, I couldn't find the dragonfly. The part of the 'lawn' where I saw it is more of a flowerbed (where most of the milkweed grows in the yard), and is right now covered with leaves that will stay there until spring. I stood there and looked all around for the dragonfly, but I couldn't find it among the leaves. I saw something zip past me, and thought maybe it was the dragonfly, but I missed where it had gone, and figured that it had flown away, and that was that. I contemplated going back in the house to leave the camera, or at least leaving it on the porch, but I decided to carry it with me down to the mailbox. As I started down the stone stairs to the mailbox, I obviously disturbed the dragonfly which was, indeed, still nearby, and saw where it then landed on the stone steps; I approached cautiously, but it flew off again. I watched where it landed and followed; it flew away when I got close. This happened several times until finally, the dragonfly settled down and stayed there for me to get some pictures.

This is the first one I got of today's Backyard Bug of the Day:

 You can probably see why I had trouble finding it in the first place.

 I think that this may be a species of dragonfly that is specifically active in the late autumn. It is certainly the first dragonfly I have seen for ages.

 Here it has moved again. While I was observing it and taking pictures of it, it frequently flew away and landed elsewhere. But having a great deal of perseverance, I kept at it.

 Then one time it flew away just as I was about to take its picture from a new angle. I watched where it went, and before I could go follow it, it came back and landed in front of me again. I took the opportunity while it was being cooperative (and it did end up being a very cooperative dragonfly) to get some closeup shots and figured out why it had flown away that time. See those threadlike things coming off from its face, that look like long chin hairs? Those are part of a bug it is eating. It had flown off, captured a bug, and flew back to eat it. Needless to say I have no idea what kind of bug it is eating here.

I didn't continue my bug walk at that time, because I had other things to do first, but later I went out looking for bugs. I saw a lot flying around, but not much to photograph, because almost everything I saw was flying. I persevered, though, and made my way around the whole yard. Eventually there was nowhere else to look, so I started back to the house, and happened to see this:

 Now, this bird is not in my backyard, so I can't call it Backyard Bird of the Day, and am cheating to even be posting it on the blog, which is supposed to be all pictures taken in my backyard. However, I was in my backyard when I took it, with my telephoto lens, so technically this is a picture taken in my backyard, even if the thing I took the picture of was not. If I ever win the lottery this tree will be in my backyard, because I will buy this land and add it to my backyard, but for the moment it is not. Anyway, I ran back to the house to get the telephoto lens, which was conveniently sitting right by the back door because I had used it earlier, and got some pictures of this hawk. And then I got a chance to demonstrate that I do have some patience. You see, whenever I take a picture of a bird of prey just sitting in a tree, I always want to get a shot as it if flying away. The thing is, sometimes these birds of prey are content to just sit in a tree for quite a long time. So I have to wait. And keep the camera pointed at them, and in focus, because when they fly, it's takes only a moment for them to be gone. So... I waited.

 It shifted position, and I thought, oh, good, it's about to fly, but it did something else. Never mind what.

 Then it shifted again! This looked promising, like a flight about to happen!

 Nope.

Ah, there we go! I think this is a red tailed hawk.

 Here is the reason the telephoto lens was by the back door: I had earlier been trying to get a picture of this woodpecker. Perseverance doesn't always pay off.

Random Bugs:

Yeah, that's it. And no arachnids today, either. Well, it was only in the 40s, so I was happy to find anything at all, and to be hearing a fair number of crickets.