Peace and Droplets

One of the great things about winter is that no one does any yard work. That means that you can go outside on a Saturday and it will be quiet. No lawn mowers. No leaf blowers. Just quiet. And without those machine noises you can hear other things. Today I was hearing quiet, little noises that I thought could be many different things, little pitter-pat sounds in the leaf litter that could be insects, or so I thought. But it turned out to be the earliest drops of rain. Soon there were enough that it was clear what I was hearing. And then I had to go inside. So I didn't get to peruse much of the backyard today, but I did find a few things.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I know, this is a horrible picture. I just wanted to start by showing you where I first spotted this insect. That is my shoe. I had to take it off to take this picture. While it is possible to take a picture of a bug on my shoe while still wearing my shoe, it does make a difference where on the shoe the bug is. This one was on the side, and I am just not flexible enough to get that shot. So, I had to take off my shoe and stand there on the gravel driveway in my sock to get this. And the little critter wouldn't even sit still, so the picture is out of focus. Then it dropped onto the ground...

 ... and I managed to get a better shot. I think this is a stonefly.

It wasn't sunny today, but it was warm, and the oak tree favored by the winter fireflies was teeming with them. And a lot of them were active, too, crawling around instead of just sitting in crevices in the bark.

 A bit of a bug-finding test for you. I think there are 5 here.

I think there are 5 here, too.

I also found a couple of twice-stabbed lady beetles:

 And a birch catkin bug.

 I found this under the rotting log. the white blobs in the front and to the back of the shot are those insect eggs I found the other day. Only the other day I didn't notice the ones in the back, deeper in the crevice. I don't know if that is because they weren't there, or because I am not very observant.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 The only reason I saw this tiny spider is because I was taking that picture of the stonefly on the driveway, and I happened to see this moving. This is a tiny spider that I would never have seen otherwise. You can gauge the size of it from the fact that that is sand it is crawling on.