November Snows Bring Fall Flowers

This is the scene in my backyard today:

 It's a new kind of scene for me, flowers in the snow. I like it. The mums don't seem to mind it, but we'll see what they're like in the coming days.

As I was standing at my bedroom window, looking down at all of the animal footprints in the snow, and noticing how well the snow had cleaned the window, a fly buzzed past the window a few times. So I knew there were bugs out and about today. The temperature was in the 40s, which is acceptable to some bugs. The blanket of snow obviously is going to keep anything cuddled up in the leaf litter from coming out today, but hey, I figured I'd find some flies, basking on the side of the house, or on tree trunks. I didn't find any flies, other than the one I saw out the window (the sun had been mostly covered by clouds by the time I went outside, so no basking in the sunshine anymore), but I did see this:

 Ladybeetle on the side of the house. Probably looking for a way in.

Backyard Bird of the Day:

 Robin. There was a whole flock of them. So much for robins being a sign of spring.

I ended up not finding as many bugs as I had hoped. Even though it was warmer today than the last couple of days, the winter fireflies I found had wedged themselves a little farther into the tree bark:

 

 I found something of an answer about the fate of the tree cricket. This was at the base of the tree. Looks like it was probably eaten.

 I found this chrysalis cradled among the needles of a cedar tree (are they called needles on a cedar tree?). You can see the threads that the caterpillar used to pull the needles together before becoming a chrysalis.

The Big Surprise Bug of the Day:

Case moth caterpillar.

I was happy to find a couple of spiders today for Arachnid Appreciation:
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