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.

Mistaken Identity

 Well, I didn't expect to be posting again today, but here I am. Today was not as satisfyingly buggy as yesterday was, and as a photographer of insects it was quite frustrating (Yesterday I took over 300 pictures; today I took about a tenth of that). I saw my first butterfly of the year, it fluttered right past me, but I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it. I didn't even get to see what it was, although I could tell that it was not a mourning cloak, which surprised me, because my first butterfly of the year is usually a mourning cloak, and usually around this time.

Anyway, I only have one bug to share with you today...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

I don't know what kind this is, and I am too lazy to look it up, in part because it was incredibly small, so it was probably an early instar, which means it might be harder to identify; sometimes caterpillars look very different in their early instars than they do when they are more mature, and my caterpillar guide usually only shows what they look like in the later instars. This one was so small that before I looked at it through my camera lens and saw it magnified, I though it was some kind of leafhopper. Although, I suppose if you don't know what size leafhoppers tend to be, that probably means nothing to you.

I was on the lookout for frogs in the stream and ponds today, and was finally rewarded by finding this one in the small pond, which is still overflowing its usual banks:

As you can see, it was pretty mellow, and allowed me a nice, close look. Actually, if you look really closely you can see me and my camera reflected in its eye. I wonder, though, if it was so chill because it was literally chilled–frogs are cold-blooded, and though it was pretty warm today, the water was still rather cold. It may not have been warm enough to move. Well, it could probably move, but it may have been feeling rather sluggish. It certainly made no effort to catch any of the water striders that were skating on the pond (still too far for me to get a good photo).

Hello There

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Wow. That loaded fast.

Hi there. Long time no blog. There are several reasons for that, and one of them is that I just couldn't deal with how long it was taking to load pictures, between my slow internet and my slow computer. A couple of months ago we got upgraded to fiber optic internet, and around that time my computer died and I had to get a new one. But I am lazy, and I procrastinate a lot, so it's taken until now for me to try to load a picture on here to see if it has sped up at all and... wow. It used to take up to five minutes for a picture to load. Those lovely crocuses took a couple of seconds. 

So, am I going to go back to blogging every day about bugs? No, because I have had other reasons for not posting, but I am going to do my best to get back to doing this at least sometimes. It's been about a year and a half since my last post, I think, and sometimes I have taken pictures and intended to post, but didn't do it–not enough time, not enough will to overcome inertia. I haven't done many bug walks in the last year and a half, but I am always looking for bugs when I am out in my yard, or in the woods. I even photograph them sometimes. I have taken a lot of walks in the woods since I last posted–I am out there almost every day. Today I spent almost three hours walking in the woods, following almost all of our paths, and walking in some places where there aren't paths (which was a thorny endeavor). I brought my camera with the macro lens on it. And I concentrated my efforts on finding bugs, with a pretty good level of success. One of the reasons I have not posted in so long is because there haven't been as many bugs, and I don't know if that's from climate change, or the droughts we've been having the last few years; it's worrisome, but it takes a long time to figure out what patterns mean. This winter I have barely seen any winter fireflies, stoneflies, or crane flies, and I don't think I saw any snow fleas at all (we had barely any snow, but you don't have to have snow to have snow fleas).

But it's not winter now. Well, astronomically we have a bit of winter left, but meteorologically we are almost two weeks into spring, and today the weather really expressed it. It was warm (60s) and sunny, and absolutely lovely. It felt good to be out in the woods with no coat, gloves, or hat, although I did have to wear my rain boots because many paths are muddy quagmires at the moment (we didn't have much snow this winter, but we were deluged with rain). I had hoped to see some frogs, and maybe snakes (we have seen both recently), but all I saw was some birds and bugs. And that's enough to make me happy today.

So, here we are. First blog in a long time... So what does that mean?

Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day! I saw enough bugs today that, given my lack of blogging made it hard for me to choose, so there's a bunch of Co-Bugs of the Day.

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #1:

Winter firefly. I have only seen a couple of these this winter (and, to reiterate past information, they are not just active in the winter, but year round, are diurnal–active in the daytime–don't have bioluminescence as adults, and can be seen on sunny, mild winter days on the trunks of trees), but today I saw several of them.

Two on one tree. A far cry from past winters when I would see a dozen or so on the trunk of the tree next to my driveway, but still welcome to see.

Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day #2:

Candy striped leaf hoppers.

As usual, I found dozens of these sunning themselves on the branches and leaves of a beech sapling. They like mild winter days.

 

Backyard Co-Bug of the Day #3:

Bee. I actually went out with my camera today because I was hoping to find bees; with the crocuses and creeping myrtle in bloom I thought I might find bees in the flowers. I didn't find them in the flower, but I found a couple on tree trunks.

Backyard Co-Bugs of the Day #4:

Blackfly larvae. These are aquatic larvae, and I find them clinging to leaves and rocks in the stream in the woods. With the amount of rain we have had the last couple of months the stream has been flowing strong, and these larvae cling to leaves or rocks in the current and grab food as it flows past them. I am not sure if they eat plant matter or other insects, but they are pretty small, so whatever they're grabbing must be, too. Blackflies are kind of unpleasant–they bite–and the larvae are pretty creepy, but they are still interesting.

Closer look... In order to get these shots I had my left foot in the stream, my right knee kneeling on some soggy moss, and my camera lens about an inch from the surface of the water.

The crocuses are creeping myrtle are not the only things blooming...

Skunk cabbage flowers are in bloom in the wetland areas of the woods.

 

This would be Backyard Bird of the Day if I had had a different lens on my camera today, and it had been a little more cooperative:

That black shape right in the middle of the picture is a pileated woodpecker. It flew right by me, calling out to announce its presence. But the macro lens is not the right lens for this subject.

Other Bugs:

While there were no bees on the crocuses, there were some gnats.

Winter crane flies have been a rare sight this winter, but I found a swarm of them today:

Stone fly

Anyone who thinks that flies all die when winter comes is wrong. I often see them sunning themselves on the front of my house in the winter, even on cold days. I saw a few different species of flies in the woods today, and a couple even let me get close with my camera:

Wasp

The ponds in the woods are full of water, and today when I was looking for salamander eggs I saw a couple of water striders:

I saw this, too, but I don't know if these are eggs, or just bubbles:

Arachnid Appreciation:

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Jumping spider on the screen on the back door

There are lots of tiny spiders on tiny webs in the woods.

There are some areas of the woods with rain pools, including a spot where we have a path that is currently inaccessible. I went to check it out today and found this spider struggling on the water:

I rescued it, but it did not thank me.

I only rescued it because it appeared to be struggling; often I see spiders walking or sort-of-skating on the surface of the stream or ponds, like this one that was close to the struggling one, but not having any problems: