Seasons Change

This was the last day of autumn, and it felt a little bit like spring. Funny thing about seasons–winter and summer are opposites, but spring and fall are pretty much the same, just traveling in different directions. I have noticed a lot lately that there are days when it seems like springtime. The temperatures are the same, it looks the same (the after the leaves/before the leaves part of each season), and when the birds are singing... it could be March instead of December. This is all enhanced by the squishiness of the ground from all the rain we have had. And every time this has happened lately, I get this feeling like we skipped winter and everything is going to be lovely again soon... If only. We still have the bitterness to get through. One thing's for sure–there aren't any winter days that I could mistake for summer.

So, on this last day of astronomical autumn, this mild day that is the calm before a storm, there were not many bugs to be seen. In fact, the lack of bugs is why I haven't posted in a couple of days. I did my bug walks, but all I found were a couple of springtails (In fact, yesterday I found ONE springtail, and one of those nymphs in the moss. That's it). And that's pretty much the case today, but I did find one thing today (not an insect) that rather surprised me (when it probably shouldn't have):

 Slug. Ugh. After seeing a couple of baby slugs earlier this week this should probably not have been a surprise, but it was. Even though the high today was in the mid-40s I would have thought that the overnight lows in the 20s all week would not be slug-friendly. And yet, there it was, crawling around atop the leaf litter.

Yesterday I was only able to find one of those little nymphs in the moss that I saw so many of the other day. Today there were quite a lot more:

 I found one small swarm of insects, which I assume were winter crane flies, but I didn't manage to get a look at them when they landed, so I can't be sure.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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