The Hardy Ones

It froze last night. The low was 28ºF. It's hard to believe that less than a week ago we had a night with a low temperature of 68ºF. But so it is in Connecticut. Yesterday's weather has little bearing on today's, and today's weather has little bearing on tomorrow's. It would not be unprecedented to have a difference of 30 degrees from one day to the next. Of course, tomorrow is not going to be 30 degrees warmer than today, but the point is, it could be if it wanted to be.

If you are thinking that the freeze last night means that there were no bugs today you are mistaken. The daytime high was a balmy 55.4ºF, and even in January if the temperature gets up into the 40s there will be bugs around. There won't be many of them, but there will be something. Even if there is snow on the ground, there could be bugs - have you ever seen snow fleas?

Hopefully we will not be worrying about snow for a while (though we have had some really early storms in the last couple of years - snow for Halloween!), and after yesterday, today actually felt kind of nice - I guess I have acclimated a bit already. I even wore shorts (I told you I don't want to give them up!). Still, there was not a great variety of bugs to be seen today.

There were a LOT of birds though. So...

Backyard Co-Birds of the Day #1:

 Turkeys! There were four of them today; I spotted one of them meandering up the driveway, and when I went outside, there were the four of them. I was happy to see them - it's been a few years since I saw turkeys in the backyard.

Backyard Co-Birds of the Day #2:

 You're going to have to work for this one. It wasn't very cooperative, and it blends in really nicely with autumn leaves.

I'll give you a hint in this picture - it's eating wild grapes. I am guessing this is some kind of warbler that is migrating, but my bird identifications are no better than my bug identifications. And in my bird book there are about a million different migrating warblers that all look pretty much the same.

There have been a lot of birds around for the last few days. There could be a lot that are migrating, I guess, but not all of them have been migratory birds. Some, like chickadees and cardinals, are ones we have here year round. There have just been more of them lately.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Cricket hiding from the cold in a crevice of tree bark. I don't think that looks like a particularly cozy spot...

Of course I spotted a lot of these:

Usually when I see these bugs they are just sitting on leaves, but today a lot of them were flying, in a group swarm kind of way. Obviously, it is hard to get pictures of this, but I tried...

 Here's a zoomed-in shot...

And another.

Not all of the ladybugs have taken shelter:

 I thought this was another instance of clueless ladybugs, or in this case, a ladybug larva, but...

... looking closer I could see that the larva already has an aphid to eat.

I was curious to know what kind of bugs I would still find today, and it was most of the usual suspects, including case moth caterpillars:

And one lone looper:

And aphids, of course:

Also, some kind of larva:

One wasp basking in the sun (while it was out):

The last goldenrod, but no bees:

A couple of spiders for Arachnid Appreciation:
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The camouflage worked a little better when the goldenrod was golden.