Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Missing Things

 I am getting out of touch with my backyard. I don't spend enough time out there. I am missing transitions from spring into summer, and who knows what has been happening out there that I have not witnessed? I am ashamed of myself, for allowing other things to take me away from something that means so much to me. I looked at my blueberry bush today and saw that there are blueberries on it, not ripe yet, but fully-formed fruits, when I never even took the time to appreciate the flowers this spring. I am spending too much time worrying about getting rid of invasive plants on my property, and not enough time appreciating the loveliness around me. Not that I don't appreciate it at all, I do, but I used to pride myself on noticing the small beauties. I have never really understood exactly what the phrase "can't see the forest for the trees" means, but I suspect I might be doing whatever it is it is talking about.

I do, however, still look for bugs every time I go outside. Occasionally in the last week or so since my last post I have even taken a few pictures, and chosen a Backyard Bug of the Day.

Here's today's Backyard Bug of the Day:


I found a couple of these pretty moths on the invasive dame rocket flowers that I should be removing, but I can't bring myself to because they attract insects.

 Other Bugs from Today:

I can't identify species of dragonflies by name, but I can identify this one as the least cooperative species of dragonfly:

This is about the closest I have ever gotten to one of these. Other species of dragonflies will let me get close enough to see that they have compound eyes, but not these. I saw it sitting here through the kitchen window, and went to get my camera. I knew it would still be there when I got outside. And I knew this was as close as I would get with my camera. Right and right.

Backyard Bunny of the Day:

I got about as close to this bunny as I did the dragonfly. If you look really closely (and why would you want to for this?) you can see that it has ticks attached to its neck. Often when I take pictures of rabbits they have ticks on their necks.


Tiny gnat in a dandelion
 

Backyard Bug of the Day from May 24, 2022:

Some kind of beetle I found on an after-dark walk. Lit by flashlight, photographed with my phone, which is why it's not a close-up. I fully expected this beetle to play dead and roll off the leaf when I tried to take a picture, but it stayed still for me. I think this is the same kind of beetle I found on my porch about a week or so earlier that dropped off the wall to play dead on the floor when I tried to get a picture.

Other Bugs from May 24:

Lace bug. I have some wild cherry trees in my yard, and if you want to find lace bugs you should check the wild cherry trees, because that is usually where I find them.

Side view of how that looks underneath.

Assassin bug. An adult, which is rare for me to see. I see the nymphs a lot, but I hardly ever see an adult. I suppose that's because a lot of nymphs are born, but not a lot make it to adulthood, which is the case for most insects (or other animals that produce a lot of young. Or even the ones who DON'T produce a lot of young).

I think this is a sawfly. If not, it's some other kind of wasp (sawflies being wasps, not flies).

Backyard Bug of the Day from May 25, 2022:

Tiger moth, possibly a harnessed tiger moth, as identified by a friend.

Arachnid Appreciation:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

A web full of seed fluff and pollen...

... and a little spider hiding among the leaves.



Monday, May 23, 2022

Suddenly Spring

 I'm still not getting out to the woods every day yet, and this time of year, the time of great change, missing a couple of days means that everything seems to change very suddenly. So today when I went out to the woods it was overwhelming how lush and green it is. Overwhelming in a good way. The woods are leafed out, from the ferns and skunk cabbage in the understory all the way to the treetops. It's gorgeous. Not going out every day makes me feel like I am missing things, though. I haven't brought my camera much lately, because with my knee not up to strength I worry about falling, and either breaking my camera, or breaking myself in my attempt to protect my camera. But today I saw a cool crane fly just as I was setting out, and decided to walk back to the house to get my camera. I generally always regret not bringing it at some point when I don't have it, but I figured if I brought it, I would not see anything to photograph, especially as it was nearing dusk. Anyway, a few weeks ago I saw mayflies on a couple of walks, and haven't seen one since, and I figured that I had missed the entire rest of mayfly season. 

But I had not. Backyard Bug of the Day:

Mayfly. But you probably already guessed that.


Last week, a couple of nights before the full moon we decided to do our walk late in the evening, so we could walk in the moonlight. With the trees almost fully leafed out we knew we would not be able to walk without flashlights, like we can on moonlit nights in the winter, but it would still be pretty. The moon played hide and seek among the clouds while we were out there, though, so it was quite dark at times, but I sometimes turned off my flashlight just to appreciate the darkness. During one of those times I spotted something I would not have seen with my light on.

Backyard Bug of the Day from May 15:

Firefly larva. Not the bright green in the upper left, the insect in the middle. I saw it glowing on the ground, which I could not photograph with my phone, so I did the next best thing: shine my flashlight on it, so even if you don't get to see it glow, you now know what a firefly larva looks like.

A couple of days later I was out on my back porch looking at the stars and saw my first fireflies of the season. It was pretty early for sighting them, so I was thrilled. Since then I have only seen one, though. Curious...

All right, so it's been a while since I blogged, let me see what I need to catch up on before I get to today's other bugs...

Some cool bugs attracted to the front porch light on May 12th:

Ichneumon wasp, I think.

Crane fly

Moth

This would have been the Backyard Bug of the Day on May 14th if it had been more cooperative:


 

THIS is Backyard Bug of the Day from May 14th:

Springtail among dandelion seeds

I didn't post it on that day, but this is Backyard Bug of the Day for May 17th:

Carpenter bee making a home in the base of my mailbox

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a lot of leaf damage on a sassafras tree in my backyard, but I could not find the insects that were causing it. Then some days later I noticed similar leaf damage on a sassafras tree in the front yard, and this time the culprits were still there:

Weevils. There are three here; two of them are working on creating more weevils. The third one had also been trying to get involved in that activity, but did not succeed.

On a walk in the woods, with my camera, not my phone, on May 19th:

Moth. It may be obvious in the picture, but out in the wild I had to look closely to be sure that's what I was seeing.

Now, back to today's lovely walk...

I found a multiflora rose bush with several lady beetles on it, including these two:


And this one.

Backyard Amphibian of the Day:


This is a fly that was killed by a fungus infection.


Stonefly


Forest tent caterpillar. 


I slogged through some mud that tried to pull off my shoe to look at these flowers, as they are new to me; I don't think these were in my woods the last couple of springs. I did not notice the tiny beetle when I took the picture, can you spot it?


I don't know what species this caterpillar is, but there is a curious thing about it. If you look at the frass (which is caterpillar poop, and yes, I know, you think it's weird that I am telling you to look at poop), instead of just dropping its frass, or flinging it away as some caterpillar species do, this one strings them on silk, and sometime you'll see these caterpillars with a string of them hanging from their back end. Weird, and I have no idea why it does this, but you can see the string between the pieces of frass.


Fly
 

I don't have a picture, but I saw my first hummingbird of the year last week. I was sitting on the back porch and it zoomed right past me, and flew into the woods.

This is now the season for walking face-first into spiderwebs about every ten feet on the trail, which is not my favorite way to appreciate arachnids, but I did find a few for Arachnid Appreciation today:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.










Monday, May 9, 2022

Beetle Beauty

 I didn't have a chance to do a bug walk today, but one of my favorite bugs, one which I have been looking for for weeks, happened to be on the steps on the way to the mailbox today. It flew away when I approached, but landed a little further on, so I went in and got my camera. It's a tricky insect to photograph, rarely cooperative, and with the state of my knee I knew it would be impossible to get down to its level, so I took its picture with my zoom lens (which is what was on the camera) instead of the macro. I didn't have to get close this way, or kneel down on stone stairs. As it is, I didn't get as close as I would have liked–like I said, it's not a cooperative insect. If I couldn't get close enough for the shot with a zoom lens, imagine trying to get close enough with a macro. As a species, though, it's beautiful and I love the quirky, belligerent personalities of these beetles. Fortunately I have never experienced it, but I have heard they can give you a pretty nasty bite, too.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Six-spotted tiger beetle


Thursday, May 5, 2022

Busy Day in the Backyard

 Where to start? What to say? I spent a long time outside today, or staring out the window at the outside today, and I spent a lot of time thinking about the wonderfulness of the natural world today, so what do I even say about it?

I love my backyard. I love my woods. I love seeing interesting and beautiful things living and growing. I love learning new things because of what I have seen. 

Today while I was getting to ready to go for my walk in the woods, sitting on the back porch putting on my shoes, I saw my first hummingbird of the year. It zoomed past me and into the woods. It made me smile, sitting there on the back porch by myself. I don't smile much.

Today my backyard was so full of life! The flowering crab apple is flowering, the birds are singing their springtime songs, the bugs are buzzing, the voles are...

... doing whatever voles do. This is the first time I have ever been able to get a picture of a vole, I think. While I was looking out the window at the crab apple tree some movement in my peripheral vision (is it still called peripheral vision if its below, and not to the side? I think so) caught my attention, and I saw this vole sneak under the garden fence. I watched for a few minutes, and eventually it came out again. I didn't get much of a chance to focus, and I was taking this picture at an angle through a dirty window, so this isn't a candidate for the photography show at the art center downtown, but it's exciting for me. I only ever catch quick glimpses of voles. It's probably a bad thing that it's going into the garden, but whatever.

Anyway, about the flowering crab apple... One of the things I have learned in my backyard (and through reading) is that when I see birds enthusiastically darting about in my crab apple tree while it is in bloom, they are not there for the flowers, they are there for the insects. And contrary to my assumption that they are there for the bees, they are there for bugs that I don't see–caterpillars. Caterpillars are what a huge number of songbirds feed to their young, and it takes a huge number of caterpillars to raise a baby bird. What you can't see from the ground is that some species of trees, and apparently my crab apple is one of them, are full of caterpillars in the spring. In other years I have seen warblers in that tree, but last year and this year it has been orioles. In fact, a few days ago there were four or five male Baltimore orioles in there together, and today there were two species of orioles:

Male orchard oriole

It stayed deep in the tree, and it took me a while to get a good enough view of it to know what was in there shaking the branches. I took these pictures from the window upstairs, which gave me a good vantage point, better than looking up into the tree from the ground, but not a very close one.

I think this is a female orchard oriole. Unfortunately she didn't stick around long, and stayed in the shadows, so I never got a good look, or a good shot.

Baltimore oriole, male. This one was taken today.

These were taken a couple of days ago, when there were several male Baltimore orioles in the tree at once:



 Anyway, lots of things out and about today. From the window I saw the birds in the crab apple tree (and there were other species, too, like tufted titmouse, and some others I couldn't see well enough to identify), the vole, chipmunks, a squirrel, some bees, some butterflies, and various species of birds on the ground and in the trees, and in the sky. When I finally decided to go outside to try to get pictures of either birds or bees in the crab apple tree (spoiler: I got neither), I opened the back door and saw:

Taken sideways through the storm door, so it's distorted, sorry. But it was so cute, I couldn't resist. It's a bit unusual for me to see a rabbit at that time of day. Usually I see them more along toward evening. 

I guess now might be a good time to mention that while I was in the woods, it occurred to me that I saw members of two Phylums Phyla, (Chordata and Arthropoda) and 6 Classes (Arachnids, Insects, Mammals, Birds, Amphibians, and Reptiles. I'll bet you can guess what kind of reptile I saw). Except I can never remember the different levels of taxonomy, and the names of them, so I just had to look up phyla and class, and Chordata came up. I was thinking vertebrates (which is what are in the Phylum chordata, meaning things with a spinal chord, or having vertebrae) and invertebrates (no vertebrae). And just so you know, I am probably getting some of this wrong. Anyway, lots of different kinds of living things. So far you've seen birds and mammals, so now for some Arthropods!

Let's begin with Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Eyed click beetle. This is only the second time in my life I have seen one of these. The first time was before I started Backyard Bug of the Day. Before I had a digital camera even. I did take a picture of that first one, which was on my niece's shirt at the time. She was a little kid, and props to her for not freaking out. Anyway, it was cool then, and it's cool now. 


It's also pretty big for a click beetle. A lot of them are only about a quarter of an inch long or so. I was excited to find this today.
 

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Remember all those caddisfly larvae I posted pictures of over the winter? Wait, I may not have actually posted many of them. Well, I saw them when I went on my hikes. And now, there are caddisfly adults in the woods. And this is one of them.

And for another, Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:

Different species. This is one I am pretty sure I have never seen before. It's rare for me to see new species now, after... wait, is this 10 years since I started Backyard Bug of the Day? I think it is! And still finding new species!

I think this calls for a celebration, so... Yay!

I took my camera outside with me when I went to get the mail, and was happy to see that the rock garden is being patrolled by a carpenter bee:

I find carpenter bees amusing.

Ants on sassafras flowers

On the same small tree, an assassin bug nymph that has been in different spots on this tree every day this week. I posted a picture of it in my last post (which, I know, was not a week ago. I am not making this precisely a weekly blog...).

There is a wild cherry tree next to the stone stairs leading up from the street, and as I walked by it and its low branch that encroaches on the stairs a bit, I thought about how it probably annoys me husband, but how I hope he never cuts it because it's a place I find a lot of bugs. And then I found three different species of bugs on it right away:

Some kind of leaf hopper. So small I had to look at it through the camera to know that's what it was.

I think this is a species of soldier beetle. I see them around this time every year.

Another beetle, really small. There were several of these on the tree.

My walk to the mailbox was my only backyard bug walk today; the rest of the bugs I found were in the woods.

I stopped to take a picture of this moth, and it took my husband a few moments to figure out what I was even looking at.

 The caddisfly was not the only insect on the picnic table. There were also a bunch of little beetles (today was a pretty beetly day altogether):



Now for amphibians. The first picture is a sad one:

Once again the small pond has dried up, and the salamander eggs are left high and dry. They haven't completely dried out, but it's not looking so good for the salamanders. BUT! I haven't been down there in three weeks, and it kind of looks like some of the cells/sacs/whatever-they're-called are empty, so maybe the salamanders hatched before it completely dried up? I am still not sure they can survive in their earliest stages without water, but I am going to just hope that it worked out okay for some of them. Otherwise it appears that climate change may be dooming the salamanders in my woods if this is where they lay their eggs. They return to the pool where they hatched to mate and lay eggs, and if nothing is hatching and surviving from this pond, then there won't be any more salamanders from here.

Things are a bit better in the big pond. They were hard to spot, but we saw several frogs:


 There were a couple in the stream, too, a small one that did not stick around for pictures, and, in the part of the stream that I think of as the frog pool, which is right next to a rock that I have named Frog Rock:

By the standards of my woods, this is a huge frog. The blur above it and a bit to the right is one of several bugs that were flying around in front of it. I was hoping to see it try to catch one, but it didn't.

Also in the woods:

Poison ivy. Shiny and red for spring.

Anyway, back to the subject of being happy to have learned things, both from observation and reading. Due to the fact that I have spent the last several years observing and reading about the insects in my backyard, I know that ichneumon wasps do not sting. So when I woke up a couple of days ago and saw this on the skylight right above me...

... I knew I didn't have to worry about it.
 

 Before we get to the spiders and reptile, I just want to say that it was a perfectly wonderful day in the backyard, all the way into the evening, when I went outside for some sky time and could hear a barred owl in the woods. I love the things that are living around me.

I saw a lot of spiders today. I only took two pictures of spiders for Arachnid Appreciation:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Jumping spider.

After all these years I should know what kind of spider this is, but I don't.
 

Most of the other spiders I saw were either tiny spiders on webs like the one above, which are hard to photograph when there's even a hint of breeze, or spiders in the leaf litter, and I was not up for photographing things on the ground today.
 

Backyard Reptile of the Day:

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

As we were leaving for our walk in the woods I said to my husband that I have not seen any snakes yet this year. And then less than five minutes later I almost stepped on this:

This could be either a garter snake or a ribbon snake. Usually what I find are garters, but I think this one might be a ribbon. I couldn't get any closer to this one because when I almost stepped on it it zoomed down into one of the old test holes in our woods, and I could not go down after it with my recovering knee. Not to mention it would have sped off before I could get down there.

To be able to identify it I would need a better shot of its face.