Ferocious

 Today was one of those fun New England days that wavers indecisively between gorgeous and gloomy. We ate our lunch outside on a beautiful, sunny afternoon. A short time later it was overcast. The sun came and went, playing hide and seek behind forbidding clouds, which is the kind of weather that is frustrating for an insect photographer. But ultimately, it was the wind that curtailed my walk.

The air was perfectly calm while we were having our picnic in the arbor. But within minutes after we finished, ferocious gusts were tossing the tops of the trees. I thought if I gave it some time, it would be calm again, but when I got geared up with my camera and my woods attire, and walked out the back door, I almost turned around and walked back inside. But I stayed outside, looking around the backyard for bugs, and debating with myself whether it was foolhardy to go into the woods. We don't walk in the woods when there are high winds, and for good reason–nearly every windstorm of any intensity brings down trees or at least branches. It's dangerous to walk in the woods then. But... I really wanted to. But I was alone, which heightens the danger. But... sometimes it's only windy at the top of the hill, where our house is, and if you descend into the valley...

I went for a walk in the woods. But not so long a walk as I wanted, because it was windy in the valley, too, and discretion won out. And, compounding the moral of the story, I was rewarded with some cool bug pictures.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

This is definitely a beetle larva, and I think probably a firefly larva, although I don't think a winter firefly. I was very tempted to try to see if there were light organs underneath, but I decided not to disturb it. I do wonder, though, if I had gone back out after dark and it was still there if I would have seen it glowing. Anyway, I never did figure out which end was the head, and which the tail. And this find was my reward for deciding to go back to the house–I didn't see this on my first walk down that particular trail, and if I had not turned back instead of going on my planned circuit I would not have passed by that tree again, so I would not have seen it.

The small pond is where I found my Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #2:

Water strider! My patience and my rain boots paid off, and I finally got a decent shot of a water strider. The lower water level helped, too; it's been about a week since our last rain, so the pond has shrunk a bit, and though I had to wade into the water a little, and wait quite a while for this insect to come close, I finally got my shot.

There were a lot of water striders on the small pond today, and they were acting pretty feisty toward each other. I wasn't sure if that was territorial aggression or something in a more romantic vein...

Is the question answered when I tell you there are two water striders here?

 

The small pond was teeming with life today...

This, however, is life I don't like to see: mosquito larva.

There are a lot of bubbles in the water, some floating to the surface and popping, some clinging to the vegetation. I think it is the plants' respiration that is causing the bubbles:

There's a lot of algae and who knows what in the water, it's kind of gross, but there are lots of things swimming around in there...

Like copepods...

This one has egg masses attached. The two things that look like bunny ears are the egg masses.

I approached the pond with caution today, because I didn't want to scare away the frogs that I thought would be there...

This one hopped into the water when I tried to get closer than this...

... but this one was more cooperative, although it too swam away when I stepped into the water to try to photograph the water striders.

I have been on the lookout for salamander eggs in the pond, and so far have not seen any. I hope within the next couple of weeks they will appear. I also hope that this year we have the right amount of rain to keep the pond full long enough for the eggs to hatch and the salamanders too mature beyond the need to be in the water. That has not happened in the years since we bought the woods.

Okay, what else do I have today...

Twice-stabbed lady beetle. I use to think of these as a harbinger of spring, but I have seen them occasionally in the winter, so I think they may be a bit like winter fireflies–they'll come out any time the weather is mild enough.

The hazelnut flowers are blooming.

This shows the male and female flowers. The catkins, the long, dangling things are the male flowers, which release pollen into the air, and the little, pink pompom is the female flower. They are so small it's hard to find them even when you're looking for them.

The female flower. Obviously, those tendrils catch the airborne pollen.

This was the kind of day the candy striped leaf hoppers like to spend sunning themselves on the beech trees:

I have often wondered if they feed during these sunning sessions, or if they are just basking in the glorious sunlight, but today I noticed that a couple of them had excreted rather large (for their size) amounts of honeydew, the sugary substance that is their waste product after sucking the sugary fluids from trees and leaves.

Then I actually saw each of the insects in this cluster repeatedly shooting out drops of honeydew. I tried to get a picture of that, but...

That's the best I got. It happens very fast, and usually the droplet gets expelled with some force.

I finally found some snow fleas!:

They were on one of the trees where I find them every winter.

 

A pretty, little falcon (or some kind of predatory bird, anyway), zoomed past me to land in a tree. The one moment on my walk when I wished I had my zoom lens instead of my macro lens on the camera.

 There are a lot of dead trees in the woods, and although I am terrible at tree identification, some of them I have come to realize were ash trees. This one in particular has been dead for years, since before we bought the woods, because it was already dead when we first found it, and lately a lot of its bark has been falling off:

Under the bark is the key to how it died: the tracks of emerald ash borer larvae. I spent years fretting about the possibility of emerald ash borers arriving here, and what I didn't know was that they were already here, and had already done their damage.

I saw several winter fireflies today, but this was the only one in a spot where I could photograph it.

I saw a fair few spiders today, but windy days are not conducive to taking pictures of tiny spiders on tiny webs. But I did find one on a very sheltered web between the roots of a tree for Arachnid Appreciation:

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Bowl and doily spider.

One thing I have noticed so far this spring: I have not been seeing spiders in the leaf litter any near as much as I normally do at this time of year. It worries me.