Weirdness in the Night

I hope you had a happy Halloween, if you celebrated it, and a bit belatedly I am here to present some weird things I found in the dark of this Hallows Eve night.

Actually, I found this bit of weirdness first yesterday, in the daylight. We have some interesting fungi growing on one of the trails on our property:

I looked them up, they might be called veiled lady mushrooms, and they have a lacy skirt. when I saw one yesterday the skirt was kind of puffed out a bit, but the ones I saw tonight were less flamboyant. Still, they look really interesting...

Anyway, the ones I saw yesterday were broken, but on my night hike tonight I found some that were intact. And then, I found this one:

I don't know if the mushroom is oozing that stuff, if it's from some other plant, or if some animal came by after eating something that did not agree with them and, er... deposited something on this mushroom. And if that wasn't weird enough, it was covered with ants that clearly wanted whatever it is that is all over the mushroom. So, even though I was at the end of my walk, and it was eleven o'clock at night, I went in and got my camera to take some pictures.

This one has a shorter skirt. They all sort of look like they have layers of lace skirts, though.

Ants were not the only insects interested in the mushrooms:

Not only was this fly sitting right on top of one (obviously not the one with the weird, oozy stuff), but when I shone my flashlight on it there were lots of other flies and gnats flying around.
 

So, it's been a while since I have posted, and since I have done a bug walk. Mostly I just can't stand to be outside during the day, listening to chainsaws and backhoes. And then most of this last week it was raining. But yesterday evening during our woods walk I was really wishing I had my camera with me, because I saw a lot of insects and spiders in the woods. There was one sapling that I think had at least twenty spiders' webs in in, mostly tiny little spiders, and more than one species. I saw march flies, and caterpillars, moths, and bristletails... for a rainy evening in the upper 50s, it was surprisingly buggy in the woods. Since I was out with my camera tonight, I figured I might as well look around a bit to find some bugs; I knew there were plenty around because once again I had seen them on my walk, and I could hear a couple species of crickets. So, what did I see on my Backyard Bug Walk in the last, chilly hour of October?

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Springtail. Generally a common sight this time of year after there's been rain.

And there's hardly ever just one.

Other Bugs:

I saw a surprising number of leaf hoppers tonight:

Mostly candy-striped

And another member of the order Hemiptera, that would probably have liked to find one of those leaf-hoppers to prey on:

Assassin bug nymph

And, there were caterpillars out tonight:

 

Fittingly for Halloween, I found a lot of spiders in the backyard tonight for Arachnid Appreciation:

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An orb weaver, possibly a cross orb weaver. Her web was perfect when I spotted her, but a few seconds later an insect landed on it. She shook the web a bit, but did not go after the insect.

Then she crawled through the center of the web to the other side.

On my nighttime bug walks in the backyard I like to look up at the trees to find bugs. There are a lot of young trees with low branches, and there are a lot of insects that hide out on the underside of leaves. It's probably not something anyone afraid of spiders would like to think about as they walk under trees, but tonight I found spiders there:

Here's a closer look at that one.

Here's a closer look at that one, too.

A Pair of Cooperative Insects

I made a wrong decision today when I decided to put my zoom lens on my camera when I went for a walk in the woods. I found a cool bug, and with a zoom lens, no ring flash, and dark woods I didn't end up with good pictures of it. But I am going to share them anyway because it was a really cool bug, and it was even cooperative. It should be rewarded.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Beetle. Maybe some kind of scarab? Very pretty, and about half an inch long.

 

And there was one other bug that was really cooperative today, even though that is not the usual behavior of its species, so here is Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Cricket. On the side of the house when I went out to get the mail. Crickets of all kinds frequent the rock garden, but the rarely sit still to have their picture taken. This is a pretty large species of cricket.

The Stars Underfoot

The Draconids meteor shower was tonight, so I stood out on the back porch for a few minutes to see if it was worth really going out to watch. I saw a couple of meteors, so we (me, my husband, and my mother, who is visiting) bundled up against the chill and the mosquitoes, moved blankets and a lounge chair into position, and settled down to watch the show in the sky. 

And then... nothing. 

Eventually, my husband gave up and went in the house, but my mother and I stayed out for a while longer. Still no meteors. But then my mother said she saw something else, a flashing light. We had seen a lot of airplanes, so I thought that's what she meant, but she said it seemed like a firefly. I said that would be odd, because it's not the season for them, but she was seeing something, so I asked where, so I could look. She said it was on the ground, by her feet. Ah. I knew what she was seeing.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Firefly larva. Naturally, I had to go inside and get my camera for a picture, because this is something I see very rarely. Alas, I did not get any of it lit up. And this one is out of focus, of course, so I shouldn't even be posting it, but here it is. There were a couple of others out there, too. Adult fireflies use their glow to attract a mate, but I have no idea what the larvae light up for.

Since I had my camera out, I decided to look around to see if I could find any other bugs, and was surprised (why? Why am I always surprised?) at how many I found, and what they were. Interestingly, I didn't find bees snoozing on flowers, or moths pollinating them. But I did find...

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Moth fly. Yes, it looks like a tiny moth. But it is a fly.

A fly that REALLY looks like a moth. What makes it a fly instead? Well, I don't know a lot about them. Obviously, it does not start life as a caterpillar. And it has only one pair of wings, not two. But it sure does look like a tiny moth.

Other Bugs:

White fly

Fly

I found a few caterpillars dangling from trees:

Assassin bug nymph

Leaf hopper

Tree crickets:

These might be male and female of the same species. Anyway, this one is male...

... and this one is female.

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Half Mile Hike For A Picture Of Bugs

I went to the woods to work today, but when I found some cool bugs I decided that I needed to go get my camera for some pictures. In a different way than the reliable spider the other day I was sure that the bugs would still be there when I got back after walking about a half mile round-trip. There were a lot of them, and they were feeding on a pretty abundant food source, so I was confident that the feeding frenzy would still be going on when I got back. And it was.

Backyard Bugs of the Day:

Rove beetles

I can find a dozen in this shot. This is the same patch of mushrooms from yesterday's post. I didn't notice any insects on them yesterday, but today there was quite a crowd of rove beetles.

Okay, I wrote down the file numbers of pictures to upload, and I thought I would remember what the different categories were, but I can't, so let's just see what comes up...

Ah, the trio of deer...

I scared the deer trio again today, and as often happens they ran off in the same direction I was going. Usually this makes them run again, but today they just stood and watched. I stopped and took some pictures, and then turned away from them and kept walking...

Then, while I was taking pictures of the Backyard Bugs of the Day I noticed that at least one of the deer had followed me a bit, coming toward me (though staying at quite a distance), and watching me. I know that animals don't think in the same ways we do, with words, but I do wish I could understand what was going through this deer's mind.

I briefly considered doing a bug walk this morning after taking a picture of a spider (which is at the bottom of the post, of course), but I decided I didn't want to be outside listening to chainsaws, and I had things I needed to get done (which, to be honest, I didn't). But I did manage this shot:

Sweat bee and ant on aster. There are more ants on the flower, but they are on the underside of it at the point that I took this picture.

When we came back from working in the woods my husband discovered that he had a hitchhiker on his hat:

Looper

 

Mushrooms:

Arachnid Appreciation:

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This spider lives in the package bin, and when I checked for packages today (I didn't get any) I saw that it had some kind of prey, so I went inside to get my camera, and it looks like its prey is another spider.

Reliable Arachnids

 One of the great things about spiders is that if you see one of the web-builders during a hike at night, there is a good chance that if you go back the next day with your camera you will find it in the same place. Having seen a cool spider last night when I didn't have my camera, I set off into the woods with my camera today in order to get better pictures of it. At first, arriving at the tree where I saw it last night, I thought that I had been too reliant on that chance, because there was no web, not even the tattered remains I saw last night, but the bower leaf was still there, and I peeked inside, and there was my spider. As usual, I will post the spider pictures at the end of this post, but I need to give credit where credit is due: if I had not specifically intended to take pictures of the spider, I would not have had my camera for any of the other pictures I took today. Not that there were oh so many, but the spider is the reason for this post.

Let's start with fungi...

A fun thing about fungi is that they seem to just spring into existence. I have walked by here just about every day, and suddenly, tons of mushrooms!

These are on a tree stump of a tree that fell earlier this year, while...

These...

... and these are on the fallen log that was the trunk of that tree. Other than cutting through them when they fall on our walking paths (or anywhere they are a danger), we leave fallen logs where they land. They are an important part of the forest ecosystem. These mushrooms growing on the stump and the log are part of the lengthy process of breaking down the tree and returning it to the soil. Also, if you are looking for mushrooms and fungi, fallen trees are a good place to find them.

These were in a different part of the woods. I don't know what this species of mushroom is called, but they grow on tree trunks and always look to me like little cities, either populated by infinitesimal fairies, or something very science fiction.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

This is a species of metallic wood borer, but I don't know which one. It doesn't really look like any of the ones in my field guide, at least not enough to identify it as anything other than something from that family (or genus? I always get levels of taxonomy. I think it's family. Genus would be the next level). Anyway, it's a beetle, and it bores into wood. That probably sounds bad, particularly if you know about emerald ash borers, and that they are driving ash trees to extinction, but native species are not as ruthlessly destructive. There are biological controls, and they coevolve with the trees in their native space. Nature balances herself when left to her own devices.

  I found the Backyard Bug of the Day near the end of my walk; before that I had gone most of the way without finding any arthropods other than the spider and a caddisfly larva that I failed to photograph well enough to post. I thought to myself that I needed to find something so that this post would have something besides a spider. This came to me just as I entered the part of our property I refer to as the wildflower meadow, and I assured myself that I would be able to find some insects there if they were anywhere. Insects love meadows. I was right, and here are a few Other Bugs:

Katydid. Female; you can just see her ovipositor under her wings.

There were quite a few very sluggish bumblebees:

Earwig

Candy striped leaf hopper
 

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Marbled orb weaver:

Here she is, peeking at me while I peek at her in her bower. She is a female; the female is big and round, and the male of this species is smaller with a pointier abdomen. Not that I have ever seen one, but so the internet informs me.

Can you spot the tiny mite on the pronotum of the Backyard Bug of the Day?