Weather or Not

You may be thinking that the lack of blog posts over the weekend is because I was away again, but I wasn't. I didn't post on Friday and Saturday nights for a very welcome reason - my bug walks were rained out both days! Huzzah! Rain! We got about 1 1/2 inches of rain (2 1/4 of that on Friday, including late into the night). In the interest of full disclosure I should probably mention that on both days I could  have done a bug walk, because it didn't rain until mid-afternoon, but I still don't believe weather forecasts that say it's going to rain, so I didn't feel any sense of urgency, and on both days it started raining before I had a chance to get outside. I do have other things to do with my time. Then yesterday we were out all day, and while I could have gotten up an hour or so earlier in order to do a bug walk before we left, it was so cold there was no point (Last Monday the high temperature was in the 80s. Yesterday it was in the 50s. I'm having weather shock). There would have been no bugs to find. On all three evenings there were a few bugs that came to the porch light, but none of them wanted to be photographed. So... no bug pictures, no blogs.

Today was sunny, and just made it into the 60s, so I did do a bug walk. I knew as soon as I walked out the back door that there must be some bugs around, because I could hear the crickets–not as many as you'd hear on a hot day, but they were out there singing. It was not a really buggy day, but I did find a few.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I could try to bamboozle you with scientific terms, and tell you this is a bug from the order Blattodea, family Blattidae, genus parcoblatta, but I would just be avoiding saying that this is a cockroach. Before you get all freaked out, I would point out again that not all cockroaches are home invaders. Most of them live outside and work at decomposing dead plant matter, therefore helping nature. This is a wood cockroach, as in, lives in the woods. Or in this case, right next to the woods - I found it in my yard, under a piece of wood. There were several of them that scattered when I picked up the wood. It's wingless, which means it's a female.

 They burrowed into the moss with amazing speed. Because they like moss. Not your kitchen.

 This one had some kind of milky substance on its back end.

 

Random Bugs:

 When I went outside, as I mentioned, I heard crickets, but hearing bugs and finding them is not the same thing. Fortunately, I soon found some grasshoppers. They were not really interested in having their picture taken, but I did get this one.

There were a few ladybeetles around, too:

 

 Also an ant here.

 And I found another striped garden caterpillar.

 

 A pair of crane flies

 

 I didn't notice it when I was taking the picture, but there are a bunch of white bristles on the tree trunk - see at the top of the picture. They look like they are from a white hickory tussock moth caterpillar, but I don't know.

 Beetle

 Assassin Bug

 Sawfly, or some other kind of wasp