I made a bit of a tactical error when deciding when to do my bug walk today. I waited to see if it would get nicer, and instead it got colder and gloomier, going from 62ºF at 10:00 in the morning to 59ºF by 3:00 in the afternoon. So, I had a hard time finding any bugs today. I feel like they were all smarter than me, and chose not to go outside. Except that they live there. I do wonder where they all are on days like today when I can't find them. The ever-increasing number of species I have been seeing means that things are waking up and emerging from the winter, whether they overwintered as adults, or eggs, or pupae, but then it gets chilly today (and remember I am talking about it being in the 50s at 3 in the afternoon. Remember that yesterday was close to 90ºF?). Anyway, most of what I did find were things I did not want to find.
Exhibit A, B, and C:
Gypsy moth caterpillars! GAH!
They'd be cute if they weren't so horrible.
I found three of them, in different places in the backyard. Two of them were not on trees. When they hatch, they can crawl away to find somewhere to eat, but they can also send out a thread of silk that is caught by the wind and carries them away. This spreads the little monsters to other trees, to help reduce competition for food. Horrid creatures.
Exhibit D:
And another horrid creature. I am especially annoyed by ticks right now because I have a very itchy tick bite on my leg that I got yesterday. I wear my tick-repellent pants when I am out doing my bug walks, but I went for a walk in an arboretum later, and then a brief walk in my backyard wearing normal pants. Somewhere along the line I picked up one two of these, and one of them was attached by the time I found it. Loathsome beings.
Okay, now for the good stuff. Backyard Bug of the Day:
This is how I spotted it, a tiny, funny face hidden behind a leaf. Well, I guess that's not its face, because it's the top of its head, but you get the idea.
Some kind of sawfly
Check out those mouthparts!
I have only one other insect for you today (seriously, that is all I found, other than a few ants):
When I spotted this tiny looper caterpillar it was dangling from the leaf, and I wasn't sure if it was a caterpillar or a bit of plant matter. I was pretty sure it was plant matter, but I figured I might as well give it a closer look, so I used a stick to grab the thread it was dangling from, and when I did, the thread got longer. Bits of plant matter don't do that, so I knew it was alive!
I didn't see any other insects, but I did find out two things. I found out that the birds nesting in the thicket are cardinals (got a little too close again, but this time I saw the mother bird before she flew away. Before I assumed it was robins in the nest). I also found out something I have been wondering about since last fall, and it involves this tree:
This is a young sapling that last summer hosted a whole bunch of caterpillars (I can't remember what they were called, but I knew at the time... dark marked something or other?). The caterpillars ate pretty much all of the leaves off of this tree. I let them do this for a number of reasons: they weren't invasive caterpillars like gypsy moths, I like to let nature take its course as a general thing, and I was curious what effect it would have on the sapling to have all of its leaves eaten off. The tree is also growing in a place where I don't really want a tree to be growing, but I am too fond of trees to cut it down, and like I said, decided to let nature take its course. And in the end, it was left with only a couple of small, partial leaves. Well, now I know that the tree was able to recover. It has a bunch of new, baby leaves. It remains to be seen if it will attract new caterpillars this year.
Arachnid Appreciation:
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These are awesome spiders that like to pretend that they are part of a branch as a way to avoid being seen...
... but today I discovered that if the "I'm a twig" defense doesn't work out, they have a much more aggressive posture they can take against possible attackers (which would be me, in this case, because this spider doesn't know how I feel about not squishing spiders).
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