Seasons End When They Want To

In 48 minutes (from the moment I am writing this) it will be November, which means the start of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. I have participated every year for the last ten years, and I am participating again this year. The last couple of years have been a little extra challenging because I have been writing this daily blog, which takes up quite a bit of time, and a fair amount of my writing creativity. I may not seem to say much most of the time here, but I still have to figure out what to say. The first year I wrote the blog I didn't think it would be a problem, because I didn't think I would still be finding bugs in November. I thought that I would not even be looking for bugs, because it would be too cold to find any, so my bug hunting time AND my blogging time (which takes a lot of time even when I don't have much to say, because loading the pictures takes forever) would be left for noveling. I quickly discovered that that would not be the case; I think I had to blog every day of the month. So now I go into it knowing that I am going to have to do my novel writing in addition to my bug blogging. Still, I don't usually hope for cold weather, but if there are a couple of days too cold to hunt for bugs... no, I am not going to wish for that, because I know how cold it has to be to not have any bugs around!

Having said that, I don't have much for you today, in part because I didn't have a lot of time to look for bugs because we went out for most of the day, and in part because it was pretty chilly this morning when I went out to look for about 20 minutes. But there were a few around, which I knew as soon as I walked outside and heard that the crickets were still singing.

Which brings me to Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I thought this might be a red-headed cricket, because I know there is such an insect, but I looked it up, and it doesn't look like this. And this one is not in my books, so... I don't know what it is. But it is a cricket, and it has a red head.

I did two bug walks today, one in the morning when it was sunny and cold, and one in the evening as it was getting dark, so dark that I was using the light on my camera as a flashlight instead of a flash in order to find bugs. On neither walk did I find much, but there were quite a few tree crickets around:

 I saw this one in the morning...

... and again in the evening.

Along with a couple others:

 

 

 In the morning there was one candy striped leaf hopper on a morning glory leaf...

 ... and quite a few flies around, though I only got a picture of one.

 I found one March fly

 And whatever this this is that was on the rain gauge yesterday, it was still there today.

 In the evening most of the insects I found were on catalpa leaves, including one of the tree crickets above, and a few other bugs:

Tiny wasp?

I found a few whiteflies on the catalpa.

 

 And a weevil.

Crane fly

Today was another day with a lot of spiders for Arachnid Appreciation:
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 This might be a new species of spider for me–found on its web on a catalpa tree.

 Another one of these little lovelies from yesterday, found on a catalpa leaf.