Counting Blessings

We've reached the time of year when you look at the 2 inches of rain in the rain gauge and think, if it had been 20º colder, that would be ten inches of snow. But since we're on the upside of the weather yo-yo, where we go back and forth between abnormally warm and abnormally cold (and never, ever stop at normal, because yo-yos don't stop in the middle), it was rain, and a very much needed 2 inches.

It rained again today, which curtailed my bug walk. So I didn't find much.

I've just decided, even though I didn't choose one before, that this will be the Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Springtail. I assume the wet weather in the last week or so is why I am seeing these finally.

 I saw a few of them today.

Other bugs:

 Tiny beetle

 I was surprised to see swarms of crane flies, since it was raining at this point.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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I found this spider under the rain gauge when I emptied it.

Role Reversal

It rained all day, so I couldn't go out looking for bugs, but I didn't have to, because the bugs came to me.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 A tiny hopper, found on the front porch when we came home in the evening. It was 59ºF at that time, around 9:00 in the evening. Quite impressive, and it attracted several insects to the porch light. This might be a new hopper species for me, but I can't be sure. It is about 1/8 inch long, if that.

 

But back to the beginning of the day...

 

 This is what I saw when I opened the curtains this morning. (The white circle in the upper right is my ring flash, reflected in the window).

 A closer look.

And other insects on the porch this evening:

 Moth and springtail

 Fly ON the porch light

Puffy

Here's how I am going to do things until spring: On days that look propitious for finding bugs, I will go out and look for them, but I am only going to post if I find something interesting, different, or unexpected. I am not going to post the same bugs I have been seeing every day.

Having said that...

Backyard Fungus of the Day:

 This puffball is about 6 inches across.

 And when stepped on, this is what happens.

 You can't tell as well from the pictures, but that cloud of spores was green in person.

 As for insects...

Caterpillars are STILL eating my Brussels sprouts!

Refreshed

I probably could have found bugs the last couple of days if I had looked for them, but I needed some time off from having a deadline, so, since I didn't think I would find anything different from what I had been finding for weeks, I took a few days off. Then today was sunny and nice (well, nicer), so I went outside to do a bug walk. And as if to prove me wrong, I found something different today.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I don't know what this is. It looks like a small wasp. Its wings are oddly small for its size.

 

 I think that's its tongue, but I don't know what it is doing probing the chair with it.

Other Bugs:

Also on the chair, a springtail. Haven't been seeing these around this year.

 It was only 50ºF, but I found a candy striped leaf hopper basking in the sunshine.

 A small swarm

 The swarm landed

 Fly

 I saw a couple of lone ants today...

 This one was headed down a tree trunk... More on this spider in a moment...

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 It made a wide turn around something... Do you see it?

Winterish

I know I said that I wasn't going to post today, because I wasn't going to do a bug walk today, and my decision on that seemed confirmed when at 1:00 in the afternoon the temperature had only managed to reach 39ºF, but when I went outside to get the mail, I heard a cricket down by the mailbox, and there were flies on the side of the house, basking in the sunshine, so I figured, hey, there are bugs around, I'll go get my camera and try to find some. By the time I got out there the temperature had risen to 40ºF (Ooooooh!), and... I couldn't find bugs.

There were still flies on the side of the house:

And I managed to find this small crane fly:

And I did see a dragonfly; it flew past me and landed on a tree, and then flew away before I could take a picture. But that was it. I got very, very cold for very little purpose. Ah, well, I guess the bugs were all smarter than I am, and found somewhere out of the cold wind today.

A New Season, All of a Sudden

Winter arrived rather suddenly yesterday. After nice, almost summery weather all last week, the weather yo-yo's string snapped, and the yo-yo went plummeting down a well. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but there was (and this is a guess, because I don't have exact numbers) about a twenty-five degree difference in high temperature from Saturday to Sunday. I know it could have been worse - in some parts of the country it was in the mid 60's on Saturday and they got a foot of snow on Sunday, but it's still pretty unpleasant to have such a sudden change for the worse. I am not at all acclimated. Now, the reason I don't know exactly what happened in my backyard yesterday is because I was out all day - I left just after dawn when the temperature was around 39ºF. I came home (after dark) at 6:30, and it was 34ºF. I don't know how warm it got in between, but based on how cold it was where I did spend the day, it cannot have been much better than the low 40s.

Anyway, today the temperature never climbed out of the 30s, and I saw no point in doing a bug walk. But I do have a Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I don't know what it is, exactly, but it looks like some kind of fly.

The reason I found it, because I did not do a bug walk, was because of this:

 Yes. Snow. We only got flurries, but it did indeed snow this afternoon. And when I went outside to look at the falling snow I spotted the Backyard Bug of the Day on the cover of the barbecue grill.

And then as I was going back into the house I saw this little moth, still hanging out on the wall of the porch.

This is very likely to be the only blog post this week, because the weather is not going to be bug-friendly. But that's just the forecast, so you never know what will actually happen. I will certainly be here with bug pictures if there is anything to show you.

Following a Song

I just uploaded my pictures from today's bug walk, and I was shocked that there were 57 of them. I definitely don't remember taking so many pictures. I didn't see very many bugs. But it turns out that about 20 of them were failed attempts at getting a shot of a HUGE swarm of bugs next to a tree, and the others are just many shots of a few insects. It was a beautiful day out, and it got me to thinking - this is springtime, maybe even early summer weather, and it has been gorgeous like this all week, so every day when I go outside I am expecting to see a lot of bugs because the weather is so nice, but the weather just doesn't have that much to do with it. It's autumn, the latter half of November; the bugs just aren't here.

So, here's what I've got for you:

 Male tree cricket. While I was walking around the backyard I could hear very few crickets, but in one spot I could hear one quite loudly, and could tell it was nearby. The thing about crickets, though, is they tend to stop singing when you get really close, so you can't really find them by sound. But I did find this cricket, and then figured it must be this one that was singing. It stopped before I got close, though - I found it by sight alone.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 The spider is not alone in this picture. I wondered if the springtail would get close enough to get eaten, and it was tense for a few seconds, but it turned around and went the other way.

Different Things

I don't know what the temperature was outside today, somewhere in the 60s, maybe near 70ºF, but it felt HOT when I was outside. Funny how hot and cold are so relative.

Nothing new today, but not exactly the usual for lately. I didn't see any swarms of bugs flying, unless you count four bugs as a swarm.

 This hopper looks like it's been through some rough times.

 Small milkweed bug, on goldenrod, because the milkweed is all gone.

 Beetle

 Bristletail

The ambush bug was on the move today. I suspect that I will not find it on this plant tomorrow.