The Bugs in the Backyard: Frosted

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Frosted

We had a hard frost last night:

I went outside at about 7:30 in the morning to have a look at the icy coating all over the backyard. It was quite sparkly and bright; thanks to the end of daylight savings time the sun was up, but even in the sunny areas the frost was just starting to melt. It was clear and bright, and yet it sounded like it was raining. I thought at first it was frost melting and dripping from the trees, but I quickly discovered that though there was a bit of dripping going on, what I was hearing was the steady rain of leaves falling from the trees. They weren't gently wafting, they were just dropping. In particular a couple of the catalpa trees were shedding leaves in a constant flow. They are big leaves, about the size of my face, and covered in frost they may have been a little heavier; they practically thudded to the ground. I remember last year noticing that one of the catalpa trees seemed to have lost all of its leaves at once all of a sudden, and that's what I was seeing this morning, these two trees just dropping every leaf that they had. I didn't stick around for the entire process, but by the time I went out again in the afternoon, those trees were bare, and the ground beneath them was a carpet of huge, blackish leaves. However, one catalpa tree resisted, and still has most of its leaves, though they are looking sad and wilted.

I wasn't about to do a full bug walk at 7:30 in the morning with the temperature in the 20s, but I did decide to check to see if I could find some bugs, so I went over to the rain gauge, which has been a reliable place to find aphids the last few days. It did not disappoint:

Aphid on the rain gauge

Aphid on the rain gauge post

By the time I went out to do my bug walk about 6 hours later it had warmed up to be the warmest day we've had this week (I think. The days are kind of a blur...). It ended up being a pretty buggy day.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Twice-stabbed lady beetle

Why is it called a twice-stabbed lady beetle? Guess.

There were a LOT of flies out, which is kind of common on days that are sunny but cold (okay, at the moment 50ºF, which is what it was today, felt warm by comparison, but it's chilly for bugs):

I also found a wasp

Plant bug

There were fewer candy-striped leaf hoppers today, but they were still around. What's interesting is that about a year or so ago I had observed that I only saw these when the temperature was above 60ºf, but that is clearly not the case, since I have seen them every day this week, with temperatures in the 40s and 50s.