All or Nothing

We're turning the clocks back tonight. I love the extra hour. I hate the plunge into darkness that will come too early tomorrow. That means I have to get my bug walk done that much the sooner. I know, the amount of daylight doesn't change, but neither does the time I get up in the morning. So I lose an hour of functional daylight.

A spider just moseyed past the couch...

Anyway, thinking of the time change and the effect it has on the hour of darkness has me thinking of insects, and how the length of the daylight hours (not the time - bugs don't know about clocks) provide signals to insects in the fall and spring, about when it's time to make a cocoon, or emerge from one, things like that. Imagine being so responsive to your environment.

From no Backyard Bug of the Day a couple of days ago to Co-Bugs today, and I think both are new species for me...

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

 Beetle. This seems to be the week for small beetles. I don't know what kind it is, though. It has some weevilish qualities, but is not a weevil, I don't think. It's not in my bug book.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

 It blends very nicely into this tree stump - it looks like it could just be a bump in the bark.

 It is some kind of planthopper, I think, maybe still in the nymph stage?

 

Random Bugs:

 The numbers of these flies has exploded; they are everywhere. There was a time in my life that I would have found the swarms of them in the air to be revolting, but now I see it as an ethereal and chaotic aerial ballet.

These days the insects I find often surprise me, like this looper caterpillar. I haven't seen any in a while, so I didn't expect to see one today, especially when it was so chilly out:

 But there it was.

 It obviously doesn't know that the "I'm a twig" camouflage doesn't work as well when you're standing on a rock. On the other hand, no one had eaten it, so maybe it works on other animals other than me.

 

 I hoped it would loop for me, but no, it just wanted to sit there like this.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 I have seen several spiders like this scurrying among the leaf litter this week, but they are fast, and leaf litter provides excellent hiding places, so I didn't get an pictures until today.