Ice and Insects

Over the last few years I have completely lost my perspective of what normal is when we're talking about weather. So while I am feeling disgruntled about the fact that it's been so cold for the last few days, I have been telling myself that it's just normal for November. But it's not. Normal for November, as it turns out, would be about 20º warmer than it is now.

What's interesting, though, is that I am still finding bugs. Very few bugs, but bugs nonetheless. It was 33ºF when I went outside today. It warmed up to 34º while I was out there. The overnight temperature was 16.7ºF.

This is what I expected to find in the backyard today:

 And, obviously, I did.

But I didn't expect to find this:

 Granted, I am not sure if this aphid is alive...

 But this fly is.

And this one.

I also heard crickets by the bedrock again today. They sounded... lethargic. But they were still there singing. You have to admire such perseverance. If they are still singing this time next week I will be expecting them to be doing Christmas Carols.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I saw an earthworm. I didn't take a picture because I am completely repulsed by earthworms, but there was one there, which was pretty shocking. I guess it was driven up out of the ground by all of the rain from the day before, and was a bit surprised to find out that it was winter. It was pretty sluggish.

As I was walking around today in a mostly fruitless effort to find something alive, I was thinking about how in the summer I find tons of bugs all over, but I know that for every bug I find, there are so many all around me that I cannot see, hidden, blending in, under the ground, up in a tree, so many bugs that I am blithely walking right past, or right above, or below. And today, I was probably also surrounded by these tiny life forms - probably not as many, but hidden in the fallen leaves, under the tree bark, and rocks, and fallen logs, burrowed in the ground, there are insects in egg, larval, pupal, and even adult form, who have hunkered down somewhere to wait for spring. I can't see them, but they are still alive, and they are still there.

I did see a spider today, the one under the rain gauge (the female. I didn't see the male again), but I didn't take a picture because she hadn't moved since yesterday, so the picture would have been identical.

So, the suspense continues: when will it finally happen, the day I find no bugs? In the last couple of years of Backyard Bug of the Day I have been done by now, even though it wasn't this cold, because when I was just doing BBotD, if I didn't find anything new, I didn't have anything to post. But since I use this blog not just to post a BBotD, but to document what's going on in the backyard, I'm still going. So I had no idea that this late in the month, and with the weather this cold, that there would still be insects active in the backyard.

Life is just full of revelations. Don't you just love that?