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.