December 10, 2017

Martha O'Kennon

I stupidly erased the text from the December 24th blog before changing the name of it, so you will just have to listen in your mind's ear for what you heard before.

Here are Fanny and Pinky trapped under a thin cover of ice, and the pond with a small circle of clear water inside the rest of the ice.



Remember that there is information in the name of the file for each image. You can see it by mousing over the image - look at the lower left of the screen. Or you can click on the image to get to the (usually) larger image. Then the info is displayed in the address line above. Sometimes the second click will actually display a different view of the original image.

No ants this week. They must not enjoy snow and frozen ground. For some reason, the little tiger-striped barklouse is becoming easier and easier to focus on.

A newer barklouse is this pretty orange one. And another orange one, with wavy wings.



Here is another orangish one, but this one seems fatter with maybe stripes of fat. I believe that it is one of the "fateful barklice" of Genus Lachesilla. There are a lot of species under that genus but I haven't yet seen one from Michigan. The last two images are of the same inividual, but its torn wing is only visible in image #2.



One barklouse was had for supper some days ago, but its skeleton has hung around for many of those days. The Asian Lady Beetles continue their ever-slower game of shedding a larval skin and becoming an adult. The variation in their shell patterns is fascinating.



A few more Asian Lady Beetles, or is one of these an outlier? I think the third one just looks strange because it is still coming out of its larval skin.



Yes, here's one with a shiny spotless shell. (It may be a Polished Lady Beetle.) And two larvae about to expel their adult forms.



Here's a nice copper-plated beetle, and another reddish-spotted black beetle. Finally, a two-toned mystery beetle. In picture 2, I wish I could blow up the two little critters beside the middle beetle.



Here is a rove beetle, and here's another weevil or snout beetle, the Clover Weevil, AKA Sitona hispidulus.



Even though it is fairly cold, the boxelder bugs scurry to get under the clapboards in the house's siding. This one has lost its black bug wings so you can see how red they actually are under there.



Believe it or not, we still have a few leafhoppers. Here is one with genus Eratoneura, then genus Erythroneura, and finally a gorgeous one with colors ranging through yellow, orange and green. From somewhere I found Clover Leafhopper (Ceratagallia sanguinolenta) as a match for it, but that seems to have been a big mistake. It is NOT a Clover leafhopper.

Here is a bug that reminds me of the Lygus group. And a black and orange and white one. And a stilt bug. And finally one that looks a bit like the brown marmolated stink bug, but I don't see the white bits on the antennae.



Here are a few flies. First, probably a crane fly. Another probable crane fly. A fungus gnat.



A few more flies. First, a male midge. (Note the fuzzy antennae.) Then a mystery fly, and one sitting on a drawer knob. Then an old friend with nice distinct black spots on its wings.





A couple of baby harvestmen and a dorsal view of a brown lacewing. We usually see the lacewings with their wings folded.



Here's a looper (turns into a geometrid moth); a nymph that reminds me of an anthrocephala bug baby (here is one from July 23, 2016).



Here are some more mysteries: The first one looks like an upside down beetle; the second, some kind of fly; and third, a pillbug or some other mysterious thing.



Here are a Common House Spider; either a running or a ground crab spider; and possibly a young form of the Six-Spotted Orbweaver.



I'll leave you with this image of the pond with the little heater warming up a circle about a meter across. You can see the tree reflected in the wet part though not in the frozen part.



It's now been almost a month and a half since the big "event". I'm still in physical therapy and it is helping a lot with my balance. I hope all of you are taking good care of yourselves!

Love,
Martha

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copyright Martha O'Kennon 2017