Bugs On Snow

One of my many philosophies of life is that low expectations are the key to happiness. It is, perhaps, cynical. Mostly that has to do with the fact that if your expectations are low, you are never disappointed, and often quite pleasantly surprised, and at the very least, you were prepared for whatever dismal outcome you received. Obviously it is not a philosophy that works for everyone. The University of Connecticut Women's Basketball Team just won its 4th consecutive National Championship last night, which was the stated wish and expectation of the phenomenal Breanna Stewart four years ago when she started her basketball career at UConn, and, well, she had high expectations and appears to be pretty happy right now.

Still, if you're going outside looking for bugs on a day when there is still snow on the ground, it's pretty reasonable to have low expectations. Even on snow-less, sunny, warm days lately I have had trouble sometimes finding any bugs, so despite a temperature in the high 40s, I went looking for bugs today without any expectation of finding more than a gnat or two.

And I was pleasantly surprised to find much more than I expected.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I was taking a picture of something else (which you will see at the end of this post) when this little creature hopped over beside me. It appears to be a hopper nymph. I got this shot, and then it hopped off. Even though I have seen candy striped leaf hoppers quite a few times lately, this was quite a surprise on such a cold day, and away from any plants where it could be feeding. Most unexpected.

I am starting to notice that some bugs seem to be attracted to the snow. I don't know why, and I don't know if this is a normal thing that would happen in the deep of winter, or if it has to do with our weird winter/spring thing we've had going on for the last several months, but it's definitely something. I actually went outside today in the hope of finding snow fleas, of which I have seen very little this year, and I didn't find any, but I did see a quite a few gnats on snow:

 Most of them were this kind, really, really tiny. This is the biggest magnification I could get with my macro lens.

 This one, as you can see, is much bigger.

 Such pretty fairy wings

 I also found an ant on the snow...

 ... and a moth. I have to think that on the moth's part this was a mistake. It was alive, though...

 ...which I am not sure can be said about this wasp, which was in a hole at least an inch into the snowdrift. I think a lot of the bugs on the snow are probably just confused. They thought spring was here, and I am guessing they don't have a lot of experience of snow, because there usually isn't any snow when they are active. But this winter/spring thing may be throwing them for a loop.

Those last three, the ant, moth, and wasp, were all in the pile of snow that had slid off the roof into the rock garden. I didn't find them on my initial bug walk. When I did my bug walk I had a look around at the rock garden, which is almost completely clear of snow, because I wondered if there would be bees there today. I didn't think there would be, it was only in the 40s, and there was still a lot of snow on the ground in general, if not in the rock garden (the rock garden, in addition to being full of rocks, which expedites the melting of the snow, is in a warm microclimate (next to the house and driveway) and gets a lot of sun in the afternoon at this time of year when there are no leaves on the trees), and I didn't think that there would be bees out on such a day, even with the enticement of all those creeping myrtle blooms. So, I looked around without any expectation of finding any bees, and was therefore not disappointed when I didn't find them. I then went in the house, sat down on the couch, which is next to a low window that overlooks the rock garden, and I saw a bee fly past the window. Then I saw another bee fly past the window. Then I got up, grabbed my camera, and went out to find the bees (and ultimately a few other things).

 A bee and snow are two things I did not expect to ever find in the same place.

 The bees didn't seem especially interested in the flowers in the rock garden today, though. While they did visit them, they were mostly interested in crawling around under the foliage and the dried leaves.

 This bee spent a couple of minutes just sitting in that spot.

 Some of the flowers, by the way, were a bit the worse for wear from the snowfall.

 Like I said, not ALL of the snow in the rock garden is gone.

 Horrible picture, because the actual subjects are out of focus, but there are two bees here...

Anyway, I found a couple of other bugs in the rock garden:

 A fly, which I thought at first was a bee, until it landed and I got a better look at it.

 And the first of the sawfly larvae have hatched on the bush in the rock garden, presumably the offspring of the sawfly I saw on this bush about a week and a half ago.

 More eggs that have not hatched yet. I wonder if the dark spots are the undeveloped heads.

Not all of the bugs I saw today were in the rock garden (well, the first ones in the post weren't from there, either, but anyway...). I saw a few more moths:

I see a lot of moths about this size, and this shape, but there have been a variety of patterns to them, so I am assuming they are different species. It's interesting that there are so many that are out now.

 Here's another, blending in nicely to a stick...

 ... and another than doesn't blend very well with the moss, but still has the benefit of looking like a scrap of dried leaf. I had to poke it with a piece of grass to be sure it was a moth. It moved then, but very reluctantly. I don't think it liked today's weather.

 I also found a click beetle.

 Beautifully iridescent.

 The Canada mayflowers are not amused, April.

The Backyard Birds of the Day:

I think these were red winged blackbirds. I didn't get a good look at them, but that's what they sounded like. But they might be grackles, because I am not good at bird calls.

Before we move onto the spiders, here's a very, very bad picture of a critter I saw when I went out for sky time tonight:

 An opossum. It hid under the porch for a while, and then wandered out, perhaps not realizing I was still standing on the porch. The picture is so blurry because I didn't have a light on and couldn't focus in the dark. I just turned on the flash so there'd be light for the picture, and pointed the camera in that direction. This is what you get.

Arachnid Appreciation:

 This part I don't need to scroll down for, because it's just a web, no spider. Beautiful little spider web with tiny droplets of water, built between two twigs on the ground (and under a board that I overturned to look underneath). This web is about an inch and a half wide. Arachnids are appreciable for the beauty they create as well as their own wondrousness.

But now we'll skip down...
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 On that same board, spider and sow bug. I thought the spider might be dead, because it had no reaction at all to the sow bug...

 I wonder if spiders don't eat sow bugs, or if it wasn't hungry, or what other reason the sow bug got away unharmed from this meeting.

In a spot where the snow had melted, and the leaf litter was exposed to the sun, I found that leaf litter teeming with life, particularly spiders. Again a small area of ground was host to several spiders I could see all at once: