Being Lizzy Bennet

Today I walked around my backyard like my favorite literary character, Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, my hem(s) six inches deep in mud at least. I wore my tick-repellent pants for the first time in ages, because it was warm enough that there could have been ticks around (I didn't see any), and those pants are too long. The ground is still saturated with water, and though it is frozen underneath after all the cold weather, the top is thawing. The water can't drain down deep, and stays near the surface, and so... I squelched around the backyard and ended up with cold, wet, muddy pant legs flapping around my ankles. I spent that time pondering what it must be like for animals that spend the winter burrowed into the soil. I did not come up with a conclusion. I assume they have their means of adapting. I considered the possibility that they would crawl out of the ground because of it, but I didn't see any sign of that happening. I was hoping that because today was warmer (and muddier!) even than yesterday I would see more bugs, and maybe more kinds of bugs than yesterday, but that was not the case. I am pretty disappointed. On the other hand, I ate my lunch outside today, so even if a day in February that reaches into the 60s doesn't deliver the expected bug bonanza, at least it was still a gorgeous day.

The only insect I saw today that I did not see yesterday was this:

 Moth attracted to the porch light in the evening.

There were more candy striped leaf hoppers out today. I even saw them on more than one tree:

 

 The caterpillar was back.

I saw a lot of midges and other tiny flying things, but they were all zooming past, not resting somewhere to be photographed, until this one I found on the porch in the evening:

There were a lot of spiders around today. Most were in places I could not get to with my camera, but I got a couple for Arachnid Appreciation:
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Sunning Bugs

Today was a beautiful day in the backyard:

Just ask the candy striped leaf hoppers who came out to bask in the glorious, warm sunshine.

 There are four of them in this picture. And what I assume is a big puddle of honeydew.

The winter fireflies decided that this is their kind of weather, too, and so they came out for some basking as well:

And flies, too. Everyone thinks that flies all die in the winter, and the anti-bug people chortle with glee, but they're wrong, and there were a few flies out basking on the side of the house (though all these pictures are the same fly):

 I read something somewhere recently about flies blowing bubbles, and that no one knows why they do it, so I don't know why this fly is blowing a bubble, but I was pretty excited to see it happen after reading about it.

 The snow fleas were enjoying the spring-like weather, too, in spite of their name. Sorry I couldn't get a better; due to the angle of the sun and the problem with my knee I couldn't get closer than this.

 The caterpillar was back on the picnic table. I don't know for sure that this is the same one from yesterday, and I do know that the one yesterday had crawled off by later in the afternoon, but I did look for it when I went outside to do my bug walk today, and there it was.

 This lady beetle was found inside the house, crawling around on my dish after I ate lunch. I moved it outside. It will have to find somewhere else to shelter for the rest of the winter.

Tiny Thrill

It has been cold all week, too cold to find bugs, but today the temperature was way up, so I did a bug walk. I had been hoping for abundance, and didn't find it, but what I found instead makes up for it. I won't say it was unexpected, because... well, it wasn't so unexpected, more like unlikely. Maybe that makes no sense. But hey, this doesn't make a lot of sense for February:

 It's not so outrageous though, as I have been learning, to see a looper caterpillar out and about in February. It seems like plenty of insects wake up when the weather warms up a little, and then find somewhere else to go back into hiding when it gets cold again. I am no longer shocked when I find caterpillars in the winter. I am only thrilled to see them. That white thing it's standing on is not snow or ice, by the way. It's a PVC pipe that is sticking out of our picnic table.

 Itty, bitty, baby springtail on tiny, icy puddle. None of the other puddles in the backyard today had any springtails on them (that I could see).

 Midge. There were a few things I spotted flying around in my backyard today, and though I couldn't see what most of them were, they were likely either midges or winter crane flies.

 Stone fly. This is the winter of the stone fly in my backyard.

 With the low angle of the sun this time of year it is easy to see the shimmer of hundreds of spider threads around the backyard. I found one rock that was covered with a series of threads (and I wish it had been possible to get a picture of it, but it's the kind of thing that is very hard to capture in a photograph. Nearly impossible, really, and I was unable to do it). These are not prey-catching webs, but the silk lines that spiders trail behind them as they move from place to place. Some of them are bridges between things, but sometimes they just run along the branches, or in that one case, rock that they spiders walk on. They do this in case they need to make a quick escape; it's an anchor thread for if they have to suddenly jump off of whatever they are walking on. With all those threads, though, I only managed to find one spider for Arachnid Appreciation:
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 That metal spring is the "antenna" of a metal beetle garden decoration in the rock garden.

 

Night Bugs

I didn't do a bug walk today for a number of reasons, but they can be more or less summed up as I am lazy and didn't want to. This time of year it's the same bugs all the time, and I didn't want to do it at the time available to me, so... I bailed. I figured it was too cold outside to find anything other than those few things that have been around lately. But I realized later that it was probably warmer outside than I thought. I went out this evening, and when I came home, I was surprised to see that a lot of bugs were swarming around the porch light. It was 38ºF at the time, but my guess is that it was pretty mild in the afternoon, and that's why the bugs were still out and active.

There were two kinds of insects on the porch:

 Midges

Winter crane flies

Insect Update

It's been a while since I've posted (or had anything to post), so here's what it's been like in the backyard this week (the highlights. Or low lights, depending on the day and your weather preference): Sunday, snow, rain, and ice. Monday, a high of 9ºF. Thursday, 4.25 inches of rain and temperatures in the mid 50s. Today (Friday), back down into the thirties; it froze overnight, based on the fact that there's ice in the backyard, but the high in the afternoon was in the upper 30s, above freezing, but not warm.

It's been quite a week.

Due to the cold early in the week, the ground froze again, so when we got that ton of rain (which would have been about 2 feet of snow if it was 25ºF colder), the "vernal pool" puddle filled up again, and it was quite extensive. Then the overnight freeze iced up the edges. I couldn't get close to the parts that were still water, so I couldn't tell if there were springtails on the surface, but I did find other springtails in the backyard today.

I found three species, in fact. Two were on a tiny, half-frozen puddle on a rock:

And the others were snowfleas that were congregating on the same rock they have been gathering on lately (though this is the first time I have seen them this week).

I also saw a winter firefly:

This is the first one I have seen in a couple of weeks.

And stoneflies, lots of stoneflies:

I have never seen so many stoneflies before in my backyard. I used to see them in the spring, but they are the bug I have seen the most in the last month or so (although, because the springtails are usually in big groups, I have technically seen a lot more of those).

One winter ant. It is a bit cold for them, but there are warmer micro-climates, particularly where there is sunshine on rocks, which is where I found this.

There were little things flying around today, too, but I never got close enough to see what they were. The temperature is forecast to slide down again for a while, so it may be some time before there's another post. I realize all of the bugs I posted today are the same ones I have been seeing all month, I just wanted to show what happened outside after such weather extremes in January. I can't help but wonder what bugs were out yesterday, but it was too rainy and windy to go out with my camera, even with an umbrella. It was raining sideways at times.

I saw a lot of spider threads around the backyard, and since there was some severely hard rain yesterday I assume they were new today. So, I was on the lookout for spiders. I only found one for Arachnid Appreciation:
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Forecasting Insects

We're supposed to have a lot of snow this weekend (unless it's rain instead), so I feel like I could make up some kind of folklore about what I found today:

 Snow fleas, which by now you know are not fleas, but a species of springtail. I don't know why these were out today, but I could say that seeing snow fleas is a harbinger of snow to come... But I won't, because that is just nonsense that I just made up. There was one rock on the front walk that had a bunch of snow fleas on it.

 

The reason I did a bug walk today, after having no success the rest of the week even on the days that it was warm enough to make me think it was worth going out, was because I kept seeing bugs through the windows, so I assumed that there was a lot of insect action outside today. I saw swarms of what I think were midges, and other small things flying past the window. But when I went out, and did my full bug walk, all I found was the snow fleas on the front walk.

 Well, and one spider for Arachnid Appreciation:
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Hardy

I went outside today to walk around my backyard just because I was going stir-crazy. It was below freezing, so I didn't bring my camera; I wasn't out there to do a bug walk. Sure, I was sort of looking for bugs, but just out of habit. I knew there wouldn't be any, because it was only 30ºF.

And yet, I found a bug.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Midge. Midges have the coolest antennae. And they are obviously much tougher than humans; this one was out and active today with the temperature below freezing, and then there were the humans, my husband and I, warm-blooded, bundled up (Well, to be honest, only my husband was bundled up, I was outside in a short-sleeved t-shirt), freezing and eventually retreating back inside where it's warm (after a very short time outside).

It's not like the backyard was teeming with insects, though. Other than the midge, all I saw was these little critters that hang out in the moss (still don't know what they are). But then, it was literally freezing out, so the surprising thing is that I saw any insects at all.

Meanwhile, inside the house... Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I found this tiny spider on the Christmas tree as we were taking off the ornaments.