Blooming in Winter

I didn't intend to do a bug walk today, but so many other things happened today that threw off what I intended, that I ended up outside with my camera, looking for bugs. Two things in particular led to my serendipitous walk: the power went out, so, lacking electricity I was unable to do a lot of the other things I needed to do, and, when I went outside to get the mail I saw this:

 Snowdrop in bloom. It is a wonderful thing to be walking around outside in February and see a flower blooming. I thought that the freeze last week might do them in before they could bloom, but only one flower seems to have been damaged by the chill. This is the only one blooming, though... so far.

The snowdrops are right next to the stone steps that lead from the street to the front door, and so I was down at eye level with the lower stairs when I took pictures of the flower. The steps have some leaves on them, blown there by the wind. You may recall in the autumn my exhortations to people to leave their leaves so that insects that shelter in the leaf litter for the winter will have that shelter available. Well, looking at the leaves there I wondered if anything was sheltered there, and so I brushed some aside and found Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Caterpillar, curled up in the leaves for the winter. It didn't move; it was probably too cold (in the sun, but just barely into the 40s). I took my pictures and covered it up again.

I have also frequently mentioned that the area down by the street is a warmer microclimate for my yard, being between the dark asphalt and an outcrop of bedrock. There is also quite a bit of leaf litter there, and today I saw a fair number of tiny things crawling around among the leaves. I didn't get a good look at most of them, because it is easy to hide from curious eyes in the leaf litter. But I did get a little bit of cooperation from this creature:

 I thought it was a beetle at first, because it has a beetlish face...

 But on closer inspection it looks more like a Hemiptera of some kind.

 The snowfleas were out in abundance on the rocks in front.

And there were a lot of flies around, too. Many of them were basking in the sunshine on the front of the house:

 But they were in other places, too, where there was sunshine and a place to glory in it.

 A few winter ants were around.

 And some gnats.

I looked for, and didn't find, candy striped leaf hoppers on their favorite tree. I looked for some a couple of days ago, too, when it was close to 50ºF, but in vain.

I generally don't bring my camera with me when I go for walks in the woods, but a couple of days ago, on a day I guess I should have done a bug walk, I saw a lot of bugs, and took pictures of them with my phone, which are never anywhere near as good. Then I forgot I took them and so I didn't blog that night. Anyway, one thing I saw was a tree with quite a few winter fireflies on it. Today, though it was not as warm, the sunshine was enough to bring the fireflies out on the same tree:

 Again, taken with my phone, so not good, but if you look carefully you can see a few winter fireflies.

A bit of insect artwork