It's all well and good to be mentally primed to find insects (as mentioned in my previous post), but it's a lot easier to just have the experience to know exactly where to look for them. For instance, it's been cold lately, but today was in the mid-50s, it was sunny, and I thought, "Hey, I'll bet on a day like today I will find candy striped leaf hoppers on that tree in the woods where they usually hang out in this kind of weather. And...
They were right where I expected to find them. A lot of them.
This tree's leaves turn brown in the fall, but they don't all fall off until the spring, so they provide nice basking spots for the leaf hoppers. I don't know where they hide on the cold days, but on "warmer," sunny ones (warm being a relative state), they will come out and sun themselves. I think the droplet of water on this branch is probably honeydew that they have excreted, so they must be feeding, too (they feed on liquid from the tree by using their proboscis. Because the tree sap has more sugar than they need, they basically excrete a sugar water, which is called honeydew).
I knew it was going to be a buggy day before my bug walk, because I encountered several species of insects as I was walking down to the street to pick up the newspaper. I got the paper and the mail, and then went inside and dropped them to grab my camera instead, in the hopes that the insects would still be there when I came back out. They were:
Rove beetle
While I was taking a picture of the rove beetle, the picture was photobombed by...
Backyard Bug of the Day:
Snow flea. This (as I have mentioned before) is not really a flea, but a species of springtail. They are sometimes seen in big groups on snow on warmer winter days, and they hop (spring, really), which is why they got the nickname snow fleas. I found a bunch of them crawling on one of the rock steps leading down to the mailbox.
This one ended up on its back somehow.
I also walked right through a small swarm of March flies on the way down to the street. I was surprised, because I haven't seen any in a couple of weeks, so I thought their "season" was over, but there were some out today:
Male
These two were squabbling. Both males. I never saw any females this year.
Because of the comparatively warm, and beautifully sunny weather, today was a really buggy day, with a pretty good variety of insects, particularly compared to recent weeks:
Wasp (this was as close as I got before it flew away).
Aphid
Ladybeetle. I did not tell it where the aphid was (ladybeetles eat aphids).
I checked the surface of a small puddle on a rock to see if I could find any other springtails, and instead I found this:
Some kind of hopper nymph. I have no idea what it was doing on/in the water. It was moving around, but mostly because of the breeze blowing it. However, its legs were moving, so I know it was alive.
Later I found another one, lying on its back and flailing around to try to get flipped over. I helped it out, because I wanted to take a picture of its other side, but it hopped away. Ingrate.
Fly
I accidentally learned something last night via the internet. You know those ants I have been seeing lately, that I have been so surprised to see when the weather is cold?
They are called winter ants. They hide out deep underground when it's hot in the summer, and come out only when it cools off. They prefer temperatures from the mid 40s to the mid 60s, but have been seen (and I know this is true because I have seen them) when the temperature gets down to the low 30s. The come in great numbers to collect food when they find a food source (like the sap on this tree). (I did see another species of ant today, but the picture came out blurry because it was in a hurry to get somewhere).
So, now in my backyard, there are the following species of insects with winter in their names: Winter ants...
...Winter crane flies...
These were swarming today, too, but I only saw a very small swarm.
... Winter fireflies (which, I don't think I mention enough, are actually beetles)...
... and Winter moths (which are invasive and destructive in their caterpillar phase).
Considering the tendency to think of insects as disappearing in winter, that is a lot of "winter" insects!
And speaking of winter... it's going to descend on us tomorrow and stick around for a while. The rest of the week is supposed to feature temperatures in the 30s, so I don't expect to find many, or any, bugs. Maybe on the first day, but probably not if the cold spell is extended. At this point, you can assume that if I don't post a blog, I haven't found any bugs (or it's raining. That happens a lot lately. Like, yesterday). So, the blog will probably not be very regular in the coming weeks. But, you never know. Weather changes, and bugs are often surprising.
Arachnid Appreciation:
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