Sap Suckers

 I took two walks in the woods today, the first being purely social, a way to spend time with a loved one who does not live in my household while there's a pandemic going on. The second one was to get my exercise quotient for the day, and the only time I could go was just after dark. On the first walk, a camera would have been ignored in favor of agreeable company. On the second walk there didn't seem to be a point to bringing a camera. I didn't miss it on the first walk. I really wished I had it on the second. Much of what I saw might have been difficult to photograph, as it was mostly aquatic insects, some of them incredibly tiny. But I would have liked to have it to take a picture of the Backyard Bugs of the Day:

I really hope these are not invasive... So, a couple of days ago on my walk I saw a tree that a woodpecker had pecked three holes into, and sap was running down the side of the tree. I looked to see if there were any bugs there, attracted by the sap. There weren't any. But on my walk tonight, I found another tree with sap running down the trunk, and there were quite a lot of insects feeding on the sap. To give you some context on this picture, I spotted this because as I approached the tree, several of the moths flew away, passing through the beam of my flashlight. Then when I shined my light on the tree, several more flew away. So this is only some of the moths that were there. I saw moths flying elsewhere, and I saw some yesterday evening, too. My guess would be that some species has just eclosed after overwintering as pupae, or perhaps they overwintered as adult moths.

Taking my photos with my phone, illuminated with my flashlight, is not ideal, and rather frustrating. Right here I wish I was posting a picture of a spider, but I missed the shot. Instead, I am just going to tell you what I saw. As I was looking at the stream, I saw a spider on some leaves floating at the edge of the water. It was running across the leaves, and then ran right out onto the water, almost all the way across the stream! I have seen spiders walking on water before, but this one was bigger than others I have seen do that. It wasn't huge, but still, I was impressed. The current took it away over a riffle, and I lost sight of it; I hope it was okay. There was a lot going on under the surface of the stream, too–so many beetles, some caddisfly larvae with really long cases, little squiggly things that were too small for me to identify... It was a fascinating evening in the woods.

Double Walk

 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.

 

I saw quite a few winter fireflies basking on my first walk. Not so many on the second one.

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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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.

Aquatic Mystery

 Today we are veering into some unusual territory, and today's Backyard Bug of the Day is something I have never seen before, know nothing about, and I don't even know if it's an arthropod, much less an insect. And it is very, very small. 

Where did I find it? In the small pond. I didn't bring my camera with me on my walk yesterday, even though it was sunny and warm, and I expected to see bugs on my walk. I also expected to have difficulty walking, because the sunshine and warmth turned the snow to slush and the ground to mud. I didn't want to be carrying my camera when I wasn't sure about my footing, as I have explained on other days. I regretted not having it soon enough, but even if I had it, I would still not have been able to take pictures of the amazing things I am about to show you, because I was not about to lie down in the snow to get the shots. So, even though today wasn't as warm, I went out looking for the same creatures I saw yesterday in the small pond, and I brought my camera AND a waterproof picnic blanket. I was really hoping the tiny aquatic life forms would still be there, and to my delight, there they were zipping around under the water near the edge of the small pond (and probably in the middle, and all through the pond. I was only concerned with what I could get close enough to photograph. I spread the blanket at the edge of the pond (which was at least partially iced over two days ago), laid down on my stomach with my camera, and peered through it at Backyard Bug of the Day:

So... what is it? I don't know. But there's more going on here than at first is evident...

I would like to point out that these things were incredibly tiny, and swimming really fast. It was very hard to get pictures with them even in the frame, much less in focus. I have a lot of pictures from today that just turned out to be pictures of plants and bubbles underwater, because the creatures I was trying to photograph were so fast they just zoomed out of the shot. I had very little chance of actually focusing on an individual. However, I could see that there were a few different little things swimming around in there, and knew I would have to wait to look on the computer to get any sense at all of what I was seeing. I have magnified one, and pointed out a couple of others, and at first I thought these were two different species of.. whatever these are. But looking at them now, I think that magnified one is a female with eggs.[Edit: A friend of mine who obviously remembers a great deal more about what she learned in middle school than I do clued me in that these are copepods. A quick internet search confirms that I am probably right about the egg sacs. So, copepods–not insects, but crustaceans, and therefore still arthropods. Technically not qualified to be Backyard Bug of the Day, but you know how I am about the rules here–I make 'em, and I break 'em].

Definitely looks like eggs...

My first assumption about these was that they were larvae of some insect, but if that one above has eggs, then these are adults. Here's one without eggs. I don't know if it's male or female.

In this shot, see if you can spot any others, and note the springtail in the upper left by the bubbles.

Mystery creature(s), springtails...

There were some other tiny things swimming around, too:

These look less like insects. Or at least, a lot more like larvae, but I still have no idea what they are.

 

This is another shot that if you look around you find more than one thing in it.

Fortunately, I have a new tool available to me for checking these out: I got a microscope for my birthday that hooks up to my computer. After my bug walk I took another walk and brought a bottle out to get some pond water to have a look at what was swimming in it:

They have what I think are called flagellates, filamentous tails that whip around to move them. They almost look like tiny clams... These are swimming around in a droplet of water.

I have other video, too, of the first creature up there, also swimming in a droplet of water:

 I took a few screenshots, which are blurry, but you get a decent look at the thing (and I think you can get a little hint of the functioning of its digestive track, if you know what I mean):

These also have flagellates for locomotion.

 And there were some springtails in the water, too:

This is the bigger of the two I caught, and it's miniscule.

As for Other Bugs:

There was a big swarm of tiny somethings dancing about ten feet in the air over the small pond. No doubt about it, the small pond was the place to be today.

I'm not seeing as many stoneflies lately, and now I am finding them on tree trunks again. There's a lot less snow for them to crawl around on.

 

And speaking of bugs on snow, snowfleas have basically disappeared from the snow this week, but today I found them on a rock where I have often found them in other years, on sunny, mild winter days.

One insect that has been noticeably absent this winter has been winter fireflies. Normally I see them on mild, sunny days all winter, but this winter, while not especially cold, has maybe been a little too cold for them. And it hasn't been very sunny in general. I have been keeping an eye out for them, and yesterday I even checked their favorite tree by the driveway, but I didn't find any there. Finally, I spotted two of them on my walk. I didn't post them yesterday, because I had plans to go out with my camera today, and figured I would get better pictures, but today I didn't see any, so I am going to post the pictures I took yesterday with my phone. Since this is not at present a daily blog I am having to change my rule about pictures having to be from the day. So here they are, the long searched-for winter fireflies on a beautiful winter day:

 I've been seeing caddisfly larvae in the stream on occasion, and I spotted some water beetles yesterday, too. In fact, I saw a really small water beetle in the small pond yesterday. With all the snow melting there's water in the ponds, the streams, the pits... water, water everywhere. It's so much nicer than the drought we had last year. We're a little behind on precipitation so far this year; I hope the drought doesn't come back.

The seasonal fluctuations continue to make changes for the skunk cabbage sprout in the stream–now the snow is melted, but its little island is flooded because of all the melting snow, which has raised the water level in the stream. I can't really tell, and I didn't notice at the time, but it looks like there's another sprout in the lower center of the picture, poking out of the leaf debris.

I've got some terrible pictures for Arachnid Appreciation:

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Most of the things I found today were unbelievably small. I saw some mites while taking pictures of the snowfleas, so small that I would not have been able to see them except through the camera lens, and even then I only saw them because they were moving. Unfortunately, I couldn't get better pictures than this, partly because once I lost sight of them I couldn't find them again.