Playing Games

Right now walking around in the backyard is sort of like playing a game. Let's call the game Sink or Stand. It involves taking each step and not knowing if you are going to stay elevated on the crust of the snow, or sink. Today I played it with just my boots, no snowshoes, because I thought it would be safe to do so by now. After all, we've had nine days of temperatures above freezing, and yesterday it rained all day, so the snow should all have been melted down to a point where it was not deeper than my boots are high, right? Well, not so much. There are a couple of bare spots, but in some places, the snow is still almost to my knees. The problem is, the surface looks pretty level, so you don't know how deep it is in any given spot. And you don't know how hard the snow is in any spot, either. Hence the game. The object of Sink or Stand is to walk around the yard and get back to the house without either spraining your ankle or wiping out in the snow. If you get back to the house safely, you win. If you injure yourself or wipe out, you lose. You lose double if you fall into a pile of deer droppings, which can happen just about anywhere in the backyard (have I mentioned how much I can't wait for the dung beetles to return to do their outstanding work?). You win with a big bonus if you get back to the house with pictures of bugs - the more bugs you get, the bigger your bonus.

So, I won the game today, but it was a hollow victory because I didn't get much of a bonus, and that's what I was out there for. I walked around in all of that painful wind almost for nothing - not until the last tree that I looked at did I find anything. And even then it was the same things I have been seeing for the last two weeks:

 There were a lot more of these on this tree than I have been seeing. Hundreds of them. These are, I just found out from a quick internet search, snow fleas, which are not really fleas, but a species of springtail. Not insects, hexapods. I finally found out why springtails are not considered insects, too; they have internal mouth parts, while insects have external mouth parts.

 So far I have only seen snow fleas on trees, not in the snow (though I did once see snow fleas on snow when I was on a hike years ago).

I took a nap this afternoon and actually had a dream about these. In the dream I looked them up in one of my bug books and found out that they were actually baby grasshoppers, but that is not true. Clearly my subconscious is terrible at identifying arthropods.

I only found one other bug today:

I trudged on over to the shed, just in case there were bugs hanging out there, and there was this one fly.

I know I am coming across as very grouchy about all of this, but that is only because I am very grouchy about all of this. I slogged through snow with boots full of cold water (my boots are terrible. Boots that leak should be illegal) pretty much for nothing. I realize that in years past, specifically the last three years, the ones in which I was doing the Backyard Bug of the Day project, I wouldn't have gone out looking for bugs if there was still over a foot of snow on the ground. But in years past there has not been a foot of snow on the ground on March 15. I need some real springtime!

So, I am happy to announce that I actually found some real springtime today:

 A couple of daffodils have sprouted! It will be weeks, more than a month, even, before they bloom, but I am always happy to see the first sprouts. One year they sprouted the first week of January, but that was a bit of an aberration. As for this year, it's only in the last two days that the spot these grow has been clear of snow. Most of them are still buried.

 Random patch of ground, about 6 inches across.

 Robins! The traditional bird of spring! (and look at all the bare ground in that part of the yard!)

 I did a bit of reading on this. It seems that most robins migrate south, but some don't. They will stick around if they can find food. While they eat worms and bugs in the warmer seasons, they eat fruit in the winter, so they will wander around to find places where there is a source of fruit. When the snow melts and the ground warms up a bit, they will go back to eating bugs and worms.

 In retrospect, I should have poked around in the leaf litter looking for bugs. That's what the robins were doing (for a very different reason).

There is a great deal of confusion surrounding the function of this bird feeder. The squirrels think it is a squirrel feeder. The deer think it is a deer feeder. And this sparrow doesn't seem to understand how it works. I saw it sitting there for at least five minutes, not eating, not even facing the right direction, just sitting. Seemingly staring at the kitchen window.

Obviously I am stricken with a paranoid form of cabin fever in which I am convinced that the animals in the backyard are all watching me.