End of the Year Bird

Ah, now, THIS is  my final blog post of 2019. And it won't have any bugs in it. I did see a lot of springtails, and I did see a beetle in the woods when I disturbed the leaf litter, but I didn't get any bug pictures. So what am I blogging about? No, I am not doing a retrospective of the year.

Backyard Bird of the Day:

 I looked out the window and saw a flock of birds gathered on the driveway, feeding. Most of them were these, which I think are house finches. They are a species you would expect to find in this region, but for some reason they are not a bird I see regularly in my backyard.

 I speculated about what they might be eating, whether there was suddenly an abundance of some kind of seed on the driveway, or perhaps they were eating springtails? However, when we went out later there were seeds on the car from the black birch, so the ones around the driveway must have just released their seeds. Also, I looked up house finches and they are herbivores, eating seeds and fruits. I have on occasion seen them at the bird feeder.

 I think this is male (red head) and female.

 There were a few other birds, too. Female cardinal.

 The bird on the right is a junco, or snowbird.

I know I shouldn't apologize for the quality of the pictures, but I do wish these were better. However, taking pictures through double-paned windows never works out well, especially on such a dark day. I knew, though, that if I went out on the porch to take the pictures the birds would all just fly away, so I did what I could.

Rafts

Hello again, it's been a while, hasn't it? I haven't done a bug walk in ages, for reason ranging from weather, to illness, to just not feeling like it. I've had a lot to do with the holidays, and the days are very short, which didn't give me a lot of daylight hours to squeeze in bug hunting. I know they were out there, because I have seen them, mostly springtails and winter crane flies, but since I don't want to just post pictures of the same things every day, I just didn't. I realize there is always a chance of finding something unexpected and maybe even amazing if I go out and really look, but there is a much bigger chance that I'm just going to see one winter crane fly. So, I have spent my time on other things, but more on that in a bit.

One of the other things I have been spending my time on has been walks in the woods, and I don't usually bring my real camera with me on those walks. However, yesterday on my walk I saw something that made me wish I had it, so today I took another walk, and brought my camera with my macro lens in the hopes that I would see the same thing, and I was successful.

In our woods there are a few streams and a pond, and on the surface of the waters these last two days I saw a lot of this:

 HUGE numbers of springtails. If you look carefully, on the lower left you can see there's more than one species here. The round, yellow ones dominated everywhere, but there were a few random members of other species.

 There were these rafts of them on the stiller areas of streams.

 Toward the upper right corner you can see another species.

 They appear to have molted en masse, with their exuvia (the shed skins) left behind on the surface of the water. If you look closely you can also see some much smaller ones.

 On the surface of the pond they were mostly more spread out.

 Interesting things here are the other species in the upper right, and also that you can see the "springs" of some of them. They look like kind of a forked tail at their back end. Usually it is tucked up under their bodies, and they use it to push themselves off into the air when they spring. I didn't see any of them springing today, though. They didn't even do what I usually see them doing, which is clumping together and then pushing away. They just all huddled together like this on the water.

 Again, the white things are exuvia.

 Near the lower left there is a fly or bee, or something very not a springtail.

As for other bugs...

 This is not a bug. This is the skull of a raccoon that died a few months ago. When we found it it still had skin on its head, though not much hair. The bones are much cleaner now, and more spread out on the forest floor, and I saw a couple of bugs on one of them. They scurried off before I could look closely or get a picture. They looked like flies, but they could have been beetles.

I actually saw a fair number of insects in the woods today, besides the springtails. Mostly winter crane flies, but I think maybe other things, too. I saw something scurry across the leaf litter that was probably a spider. And this:

Winter ant.

Now, one of the other things I have been doing with my time lately is working on new calendars for the coming year. There are seven:
Insects: Great and Small
Tiny Wildlife: Insects
It's the Beetles
Caterpillars
Eight-legged Wonders: Spiders
Dragonflies
Gone to Seed This one is actually of flower seeds, not insects, but it's cool, so check it out.

It's supposed to rain for the next two days, so this is probably going to be my last blog post of 2019, so... Thanks for checking out my backyard bugs this year. Have a Happy New Year!

Pounce

No bugs for you today. I didn't do a bug walk, because when I was outside all I saw were a few springtails, but I am posting because this blog isn't just about bugs. I took 342 pictures today, and they were all of Backyard Bird of the Day:

 A raptor. I am terrible at identifying birds, and the only raptor I can identify is a red tailed hawk in flight with its tail feathers spread and the sun shining through them to show their color. Which is to say I have no idea what kind of bird this is, other than that it is a raptor. But this picture is from the end of the story... [Edit–I am informed, by a friend of a friend, who obviously knows about birds, that this is a red-shouldered hawk. Which I have probably seen before, but now that I know what it is, I can add it to my bird life list, which I don't actually keep track of].

I looked out the kitchen window while getting a drink of water and saw this about ten feet from the window:

 It sat there for a while, looking around. It appeared to be looking at me at times, but I can't really tell if it could see me. It was quite close to the bird feeder, but, for obvious reasons, there were no birds on the feeder.

 It eventually flew away...

 ... and landed on another tree nearby. I could see that it was looking at something on the ground, and figured it was looking for prey.

 Taking off again...

 It landed on another branch, and was really intent on something on the ground...

 Then it pounced.

 It caught something!

 It looked around a lot, which I think was to check for anything that might want to steal its meal.

Firm grip

 Taking off again...

 It's holding onto its prey with its foot, and it grabbed a bunch of leaves with it. I couldn't see from where I was watching, but I wonder if it actually saw the animal it was tracking, or if it just saw movement under the leaves.

 Changing trees again...

 It landed here, and spent quite a while checking all around, again probably looking out for other predators that might want to steal its lunch.

 It appears to be a vole that it caught.

 Ruffled feathers.

 Eating the vole

 It ripped pieces off of it for a while, and then finally scarfed the whole thing at this point.

 It wiped its beak off on the branch, and then looked like it was scanning the ground for more prey.

Eventually it flew away. I took the first pictures from inside the house, but eventually I went outside to watch it and take better pictures, and it didn't seem to mind at all. It was aware of me, it could see and hear me, and it just didn't care, which was good for me. I was bird watching, and it did a bit of person watching–though I did not kill and scarf down any rodents. And now there is one less vole to make tunnels through the grass in my backyard.

Let It Snow

As expected, it snowed today:

Unexpectedly, though, the snow was covered with springtails:

 And not just in one spot. We went for a walk in the woods, and they were all over. Not in huge piles and masses, but spread out like this.

Even more unexpected:

 Some of them seemed to be overcome by the cold of the snow. A lot of them, actually. I saw some of them springing around, but a lot of them were sort of keeled over. These, by the way, are not the species of springtails that are called snow fleas.

These are:

I didn't see these on the snow, though. They were on a rock.