The Bugs in the Backyard: Thanks, Mom

There was a strange, glowing orb in the sky today, visible through a break in the clouds. I think I remember having seen it before, a long time ago. It is called... The Sun. It was only there for a few minutes, but it provided a glorious respite from the gloom, which unfortunately reasserted itself quickly and forcefully. Alas.

I took a lot of pictures today. Not all of them were of bugs, and a lot of them were due to difficulties in getting the shot I wanted, but still. I have almost 500 pictures to sort through to decide what to show you here today.

There is something so... gratifying, I guess would be the word, in reading about something, learning something you never knew before, and then witnessing it for yourself. For example: I recently read something about chipmunks. I don't remember why I was looking up chipmunks, it might have had to do with something I saw in my yard, or it might have had something to do with a story that I wrote with some members of my family about a brave chipmunk (though it was not the kind of story you do research for), but whatever the reason, I did a bit of reading up on chipmunks, and found out that they sometimes climb trees. I don't remember where I read this, but it said that they don't do it often, but the can and sometimes do. Well, I had never seen it - the chipmunks around here stay on the ground, the closest thing to climbing for them being scampering over rocks (some of which, from a chipmunk standpoint, are pretty huge, so that's still something). But today, I looked out my window and saw a chipmunk in a tree:

Now, this is a very small tree, and the branch it climbed on is only about a foot above the ground at the trunk, and the chipmunk never went higher than a couple of feet off the ground, but there it was, a chipmunk in a tree.

It was eating something off the leaves. I don't think it was actually eating the leaves, but it seemed to be getting something from the base of the leaf stems.

Oops.

This was taken about one second before the chipmunk fell out of the tree. Good thing it wasn't up very high.

This is my Saturday blog post, but because of when it gets posted, you will probably be reading this on Sunday, which here in America is mother's day. It seems very fitting then that some of the things I saw in the backyard today brought mothers to mind.

Specifically, babies:

You may remember that yesterday I posted a picture of a tiny caterpillar on a rock. Well, today I saw two tiny caterpillars on that rock, and as they were quite far apart, I wanted to move them closer together so I could take a picture of both of them at once. I picked up a dried leaf from the ground in order to move one of the caterpillars, and in turning the leaf noticed that there were rather a lot of tiny caterpillars of the same variety on the leaf.

Then I happened to look down on the side of the rock and saw a lot more of those caterpillars on the side of the rock. I was just beginning to wonder if they had all been hatched in the leaf litter when I looked a tiny bit further down and saw...

... the egg mass from which they were hatching. I remember now that this egg mass appeared on this rock last fall, and that I wondered what kind of insect it was for. And now I know - sort of. I don't know what kind of caterpillars they are, and I am not even going to try to find out, because what little useful information I have ever been able to find about caterpillar identification, it is very, very hard to look up what they look like in the early instars (instars being stages of caterpillarhood, and sometimes they look very different in the early instars than they do in the later ones), and hard to really tell what their characteristics are when they are this small. Anyway, this got me thinking about what kind of Lepidoptera, moth or butterfly, had laid all of these eggs last fall - because this is a LOT of eggs - and about how for insects, there is no mothering going on. Aside from earwigs, a rare instance in which an insect cares for its young, insects tend to lay their eggs and move on. In fact, whatever butterfly or moth laid these eggs probably died before winter even began. In contrast, I thought of my own mother, who even after almost five decades of being my mother, still takes care of me when I need taking care of. So thank you, Mom, for being a human, and not a Lepidoptera. Having wings would have been cool, but I prefer having a mother who loves me.

Sniffle.

Moving on...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

A weevil. This might be one I have never seen before. After all this time I just don't remember what I have seen, and what I haven't, but this one does not look familiar. That's two new weevils recently...

I had to stand on my tiptoes to get these shots.

I love the colors and textures.

Before I went outside today I stood for a while looking out the window at the crab apple trees. The first one is almost done flowering, and the second one didn't have many flowers to begin with, so both are more leafy than flowery now, but they are both still attracting a lot of birds, which means they are both full of bugs, bugs that I can't see because they are out of my reach. So I felt rather jealous and resentful of those birds when I went out for my bug walk, on a day that was warmer and dryer than any we had this week (though it did rain in the morning, making a full week of rain every day), and had a really hard time finding any bugs at first. But eventually I found a pretty good selection, so, no hard feelings, blue winged warbler.

Random Bugs:

Another weevil. While the other weevil was very cooperative and stayed completely still up until the moment it decided it didn't want its picture taken anymore and it dropped off the tree trunk, pretending to be dead, this one would not stay still to have its picture taken, and this is the best shot I got.

Stonefly, and my finger. Sometimes if a bug is moving too much for me to take a picture, it gets the bug to stop and stay still if I put my finger in front of it. That doesn't always work; sometimes the bugs either walk around it or climb onto my hand, which is not what I want them to do at all. Anyway, this one stopped, but when I had to move my hand to refocus the camera for a closer shot, it disappeared.

Some sort of Hemiptera.

Zoomed-in look at its eyes. (For some reason this picture won't move to the center. It says it is already in the center).

A cockroach. Possibly a female parcoblatta americana. The female has no wings. This is not the kind that invades your kitchen, but the kind that lives in the woods. The Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America says that cockroaches are "valuable decomposers," because they eat "almost anything organic." So, very useful little critters. (This picture will also not move to the center).

Here's the cockroach's face. Also from Kaufman's FGtIoNA, "Roaches have a flattened profile..." check...

... "long, filamentous antennae..." check...

... "and two tail-like appendages called cerci." Check. Although I am not sure tail-like is the best way to describe them. I have added this zoomed-in shot of the cockroach's butt so you can see them well. You're welcome.

I think this is a springtail, on a dandelion seed-head.

Assassin bug

My husband went to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner, and when he got home, I was outside and he said he had a present for me:

It was this wasp, on the side of his grocery bag. I am hoping that it landed on the bag when he got out of the car, and that he didn't pick it up at the store.

As I was trying to get a good side view, the wasp kept turning its body away and looking up at me. It was very cute, but kind of annoying.

Caterpillar.

So, back on the subjects of mothers and babies... Arachnid Appreciation:
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I came across a little sapling that had a series of spider threads going from branch to branch, and a bunch of baby spiders crawling around on them.

In the same sapling, there was an adult spider on a web. The colors of the adult and the spiderlings were quite different, but I wondered if the adult could be their mother. I am guessing probably not, that she just happens to be in that same tree, because she is not a lot bigger than the spiderlings. But I guess it's possible. The markings on the spiderlings and the adult are a little bit similar. Some spiders do care for their young (but I am glad I am not a spider either, Mom). If she's not their mother (or even a she), I wonder if they are in danger there...

Then I noticed there was a line of spider thread leading away from the sapling, going from there to some brambles, and on to other brambles, until...

I found a whole lot more spiderlings! Spiderlings are so adorable...

I noticed that the one in the upper right corner here is a little bigger and has slightly different markings than the others. Older? Different gender? Interloper? No idea.