Hello. I know, it's been a while, and I am a negligent bug blogger. I haven't been doing bug walks lately, or even woods walks because I am having a problem with my knee, and the hills and uneven terrain have been painful for me to walk on. It's making me sad, and I miss my woods. But I do enjoy seeing a few bugs when I go out in my backyard, and have even tried to get pictures a few times, but nothing worth posting. It's a wonderfully smug reminder that in spite of the bug haters' glee that bugs all die when it freezes there are still bugs out there in the chilly weather, and on the warmer days, particularly the sunnier ones, they are happy to make themselves seen. Flies aren't exactly my favorite bugs, but I do like seeing them basking in the apricity* on the side of my house. It's officially winter now, and all that means is that it's time for winter bugs. Just kidding, the bugs don't care about when the solstice is. They do what they please.
I have been reflecting on some sad bug subjects, though. In going through my pictures from this year it is noticeable how few bugs I found. I don't think it's just because I didn't do a bug walk most days, because I did spend time outside every day, and I am always looking for bugs, so the fact that I saw so few caterpillars this year is concerning. I didn't see even a single white marked tussock moth caterpillar, and usually I see them all over in the early fall, sometimes a dozen or so on a single tree trunk. And usually when we bring a Christmas tree into the house we find bugs in the days after that came in with the tree, and this year I didn't see a single insect stowaway after we got our trees (yes, trees, we have two). Last year I thought that the paucity of insects might be due to the drought, but that is certainly not the reason this year. This year there weren't any days (or evenings, rather) when there were swarms of dragonflies; those I didn't even have to do bug walks to see, I used to see them through the skylights, zipping around, eating swarms of something too small for me to see at that height. I don't know if there just weren't a lot of dragonflies (though I did see very few this year), or no swarms of whatever they would eat in those feeding frenzies. (There were PLENTY of mosquitoes this year, thanks to all that rain). It all worries me. I wish there was something I could do about it, but I am don't know what else I can do, since I already have a 35+ acre bug sanctuary.
Anyway, I don't have a picture for this post (although I did want to wait until I was able to get a good picture to make this post, but I am running out of time for... well, you're about to find out...), and I do have a shameless reason for posting it: to promote my calendars for sale. Since I didn't do any calendars last year I used pictures from 2020 and 2021 for the calendars (I would not have had enough from this year alone). Some are specific, like the beetles one, and others are more general. I found so many cool spiders in the last two years that I have two spider calendars. Here are the links [Edit: I have decided to add pictures from each calendar, so you have bugs to look at in this post, and you know what to look forward to]:
Stingers! This one is bees and wasps.
Caterpillars (Almost all of these are pictures I took in 2020, before the caterpillar collapse)
If you still like to use a calendar that you can hang on your wall, with cool pictures on it, instead of just a tiny electronic one on your phone, and you like insects and/or spiders, check them out. There's always a coupon code on the site, so look for that, too [Edit: right now, on January 5, 2022, they are 50% off, with coupon code ZNEWYEAR2022. I don't know how long that's good for, but once it's done, you can usually find some other code on the site. And you can start the calendars in any month of the year].
Here's to a happy and buggy new year for us all.
*Apricity: The warmth of the winter sunshine.
