Forecasting

I'm not here to talk about bugs today; the temperature has not gone above 20ºF for the last five days. The bugs are all sleeping under the snow, or tucked up in the bark of a tree. I am here to talk about meteorology. Today the forecast said that there was a 48% chance of snow showers around 5:00 in the evening. It snowed all day (but we only had about an inch of accumulation from all that). Not the most accurate forecast, in spite of all the fancy technology they have these days. But last night I made my own forecast, based on this:

There are a lot of folkloric ways of predicting the weather, and my favorite, because it is extremely accurate, is that if there is a ring around the moon, there will be precipitation. Snow if it's cold, rain if it's above freezing. I don't think I have ever known this to not be true. So when I saw this in the wee small hours of the morning, I made my forecast: we'd be having snow. And I was right. I may not have been able to give a pinpoint forecast about timing and snow amounts, but then, neither were the meteorologists and their computers.

I went outside this evening after the snow stopped to shovel, not because it needed to be done then, and there was barely enough to shovel, but because I wanted a reason to be outside. Last year over Christmas break we went for a hike every day. This year I have not spent any more time outside than it takes to walk from the house to the car. I haven't even been going out to get the mail and the newspaper because my husband is on vacation and he has been getting them. Aside from our traditional Christmas hike, every time this week I have tried to get someone to go for a walk with me I have been rebuffed. I am not used to spending so much time inside, so shoveling snow in the moonlight was a beautiful interlude. But I have to say, I miss the bugs.

I probably won't have any reason to post tomorrow, so Happy New Year!

Winter Is On Its Way

Have you missed me? Or at least, have you missed the bugs in my backyard? I have been missing them. I haven't gone away, but I also haven't gone outside... much. It has been cold, and sometimes snowy, and there has been no point in looking for bugs. Even on sunny-ish days (and those have been scarce) I have not been seeing any sign of insects, and they're just not around when the high doesn't get out of the 20s. But today... it hit 50ºF! So, outside I went, camera in hand. It wasn't terribly buggy, but there were bugs around. It's kind of fascinating, really, that for bugs, seasons don't always seem to matter. Aside from life cycles that are very short for some insects, they don't seem to care much what season it is. Is it warm enough to be out and about? If so, they are out and about. Things that I think everyone associates with summer, and assumes go away in the winter, were out and about in my backyard today. But first...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I think this has been Backyard Bug of the Day already this year, but that's the kind of rule I am going to ignore because it's December, a couple of days away from the solstice, and it's been really cold. So to find this bug, which is some kind of Hemiptera, was a cool thing to happen.

 It was not at all surprising to find this bug, a winter firefly. The only thing surprising is that I didn't find more of them; I saw only two.

 I did see several flies, though, which is one of those bugs that I think are more associated with summer, but I have seen pretty much every sunny, not-freezing day this month.

 There were a couple of different species around.

And this one sneaked into the house, and into my cup, and I was very annoyed.

Ants are another insect that are mostly associated with summer, but I have found occasionally in the winter. I know, it's a terrible picture, but I am just recording that it was out there.

I was looking for something in particular when I went outside today. There is still a little bit of snow on the ground, and I was looking for snow fleas. Snow fleas are not fleas, they are actually a species of springtail, and they can sometimes be found jumping around on snow on warmer winter days. I have only ever seen them on tree trunks in my backyard, so I was hoping to find some on the snow.

I did find a springtail on the snow, but it was a different species from the snow flea. This absolutely shows that insects are not just summer creatures.

No spiders today, which was sort of disappointing, if not surprising.

Now, another shameless plug for my calendars and other items in My Zazzle Shop.

Natural Ornaments

It's the middle of December, it's cold, we've had some snow, and yet, there are still bugs around. I haven't done a bug walk in days, but I have been seeing flies when I go out on sunny days, and there have been winter moths on the front porch. But there is another way I get to see bugs in December: we buy a Christmas tree and bring it in the house, and whatever bugs were hiding out in the tree for the winter suddenly think it is summer, and start to move around. I am not saying we get a huge insect infestation every December, but I usually see a few confused insects. In today's case it was an arachnid, so I'll post the picture at the end of the blog.

In them meantime, as a buffer for the arachnophobes, here are the links for my calendars this year. This blog is almost a full time job in the high season for bugs, and I don't have ads on it because I know the algorithms would put a bunch of pesticide ads on my blog if I allowed them, and that would be contrary to the message of this blog, which is that bugs are amazing. So if you want to support the work of this blog, buying a calendar would be a way to do it, and it would also give you some lovely bug pictures to look at every day for a year. I have several different calendars this year:

This is my store link, which has more than the bug calendars in it: domedreamer shop, with my bug stuff in it

Here's the specific bug calendars: 

Intriguing Insects- This one is a general theme of insects, ranging from butterflies to crickets, etc.

Incredible Insects - Also general theme, this one includes my most exciting bug this year, the stick insect.

Caterpillars - Caterpillars only

Damselflies and Dragonflies - All Odonata–this is the first year I have had enough good pictures of dragonflies and damselflies to do a whole calendar of just those. I am glad, because I did not have enough good pictures of butterflies and moths to do a Lepidoptera calendar, so it was nice to have this to fill in.

And the last one is Spiders, so...
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Spiders! - I think you can guess what this one is all about. I had a really impressive number of spiders to choose from this year, which was awesome.

And now for Arachnid Appreciation... Actually, before I give you the picture, I'm going to mention that this reminds me of the folktale I found out about a couple of years ago about the Christmas Spider. There are a couple of versions of it, but the basic gist is that there were people who couldn't afford to decorate their tree, and spiders covered it with silk to make it beautiful. It sounds lovely, and how kind of the spiders! Anyway, look it up and read it... The spider I found today was actually on my computer when I spotted it, but I am sure that it came in on the tree; the Christmas tree is less than a foot away from my laptop, and the spider is a jumping spider, so it could easily have jumped to the computer from the tree. I put it back on the tree where it belongs.

Hanging Tight

This has been one of those December days when you can't help but think that if it was colder, we'd be getting a bit of snow right now. As it is, in the afternoon it was in the low 50s, and in the late evening it was in the high 50s, so it's rain. And rain kept me from doing a complete bug walk today. I have a few pictures, but no Backyard Bug of the Day.

 Contrary to my avowed intention to not post the same bugs over and over again, I am posting a picture of this winter firefly, literally the same bug I have posted over and over again. That is because this particular winter firefly has been sheltering in the same crevice in the bark of a tree for weeks, and I wanted to show that it is still there.

 Because it was wet and mild today, there were springtails out, but this is the only place I saw them. This is the most I have seen together in one place this year.

We went out for the evening, and came home to find not only a bunch of winter moths on the front porch, but also this caddisfly.

Mysterious Things

The lack of blogs lately is not entirely because I have not done bug walks. I have been doing bug walks, though not every day. I just have not been finding anything to take picture of, since I don't want to just post pictures of winter fireflies every day. And some days that's all I see.

Today I found something, and I don't know what it is, and I don't know if it has been there for a while and I have just not noticed it, or if it just got there in the last day or two. I don't think I can make it Backyard Bug of the Day, having so little idea of what it is, though looking at the pictures it does definitely seem insect related. When I saw it outside I thought it could just be something growing on the tree, like a fungus. But you can have a look for yourself:

It looks kind of cocoonish, or at least like some kind of pupa. But it also looks like a larva.

Long range forecasts are never very accurate, but there could be a snowstorm later in the week. I guess that would be the end of hearing crickets in the backyard. I heard one today, singing very faintly. Once the snow falls, everything under the leaf litter will be in their own little world.