Maybe he doesn't like rain

This reddish ground beetle met me at the door this afternoon, so I brought him in and took his photo.

Those are raindrops on his back.

When I put him back outside, he immediately turned and tried to come back in the door, where it is warm and dry. I had to be quite firm with him; there's no beetle food in here.

Beetle sign language

About that ten-lined June beetle: I went out in the night to turn off the hose, which had been soaking the ground under a tree that has been losing leaves in all this heat, and found a big beetle drowning in the drip bucket.

Does he bite? Well, no, he's a June beetle, and they're inoffensive. But then, angry and half drowned; could I trust him? I collected a stiff rhododendron leaf, and slipped it under him. He clutched at it so desperately that I carried him home on the leaf, left it on my desk while I finished with the hose and got out the camera, and found him still holding on for dear life. And he wouldn't let go, even when I pulled at him.

Grappling hook feet. With 6 of these, he's staying put wherever he chooses. They don't work on plastic buckets.

He finally consented to move over to a handful of hydrangea leaves. where I could dry him off more easily.

Sopping wet, and unhappy. He's got bubbles all over his face.

How do you know if a June beetle is happy? He fans out those high-heeled shoe sole antennae.

Happy June beetle. Photo from BugGuide, by Lynette. Creative Commons license.

While he was on my desk, all wet and miserable, he kept the antennae tightly folded; beetle-style fists. Quite expressive fists, even so.

"I can clobber you with these!"

Or panicky; "Get me out of here!"

(Don't you want to just tickle his furry tummy, as if he were a kitten?)

Or just giving up, totally depressed.

I dried him off with a soft, thick paint brush, and carried his leaves outside, with him holding on tight again.

In the morning, he was gone. He probably fanned out those antennae as he flew away.

Creatures of the night

One nice thing about being a night owl is that, when the days get too hot, the nights are perfect, and I'm not wasting them asleep in bed. A whole heap of critters agree with me, too.

I found these in my backyard, this week:

Once the birds are asleep, others get a chance at the birdbath, resting on the "shore", or even going swimming. This weevil is following the edge around and around, looking for the exit.

Slug and springtail on birdbath.

Algae on my bare cement, and snail eating algae.

I checked the new BirdCam's photos, and was amused by this snail. I was fussing around with flashlights and the tripod, and the BirdCam kept taking photos as I moved around. And in all the bustle, in each photo, there was the snail, moving right along, and somehow not getting stepped on.

Long slug, going places.

"Look before you slither."

The mosquitoes have been voracious these past few weeks. Even though I slather myself with repellent, I'm still scratching bites. I tried burning these mosquito coils outside the door to discourage them. I don't know that it helped.

On the plate with the next night's coil set up, I found this small slug. He doesn't seem to mind the chemicals in the coil. Later, I found him on the coil itself.

"Did I hear something behind me?"

The door stays open until late. A few critters followed me inside.

Pretty yellow spider on the wall by my desk Update: Enoplogatha ovata.

Very small moth, ditto. (White-shouldered moth)

And this: what is it? The BirdCam picked this up last night.

Something in a hurry.

Not a 'coon, not a skunk, not a cat, nor a fox, rat, or dog. It looks to me like a possum. I hadn't realized that we have possums here in the Lower Mainland.

And take a look at those toes!

Headless prowler.

I'm still sorting the ten-lined June beetle photos; I took 'way too many.

Snail at midnight

I've been out in the cool of the night with the camera and a flashlight. This snail was eating the leaves on a hanging flower pot. (How did he get up there?)

Who wants to eat in the daytime when it's so hot? Not this guy.

More later. I just went out again and discovered a ten-striped June beetle floundering in a bucket of water. And, of course, there are slugs. There always are.

In the absence of raccoons

I keep the BirdCam loaded and aimed at my birdbath, where raccoons occasionally come to drink. Every few days I check the photos. Usually, they're of juncos and chickadees, chickadees and juncos, and sometimes a raccoon tail, just leaving. This week's take was a disappointing series of me, out in the night murdering slugs.

As I went to replace the memory and start the camera going again - never give up! - I saw movement on the edge of the lens. A little springtail going around and around, following his own footsteps, like Piglet. The BirdCam delivers, one way or another.

"There's gotta be an end to this path."

"Maybe back this way?"

I'll have to send this in to the Springtail group for an ID; Entomobrya sp. or Orchesella, possibly.

While I'm at it, here's a carpet beetle that dropped in to visit. He's a giant alongside the springtail.

Not a raccoon, either.

Cold weather haven

The weather has turned cold this week. At night, the thermometer dips below freezing. Where the sun shines in the daytime, it warms up, but in my shady garden, the bird bath stays frozen all day and even my winter-hardy bergenias and primulas have wilted.

Chickadees come to my door early, calling to me; "Hurry up with our breakfast!" They've got a busy day ahead, getting enough to eat to stoke their tiny furnaces overnight. After them, come the juncos and a towhee or two, poking around in the frozen earth, looking for anything edible, mostly tiny weed seeds. In my garden, the native bleeding hearts bloomed just before frost; their black seeds were ripening this week. The astilbes, the heather, and the lemon balm were still dropping seeds, too.

The smaller animals have gone into hiding. There are no slugs to be found, even under flowerpots and heavy leaves. No sowbugs. No beetles. Spiders have crawled into crevices: the babies have hatched and ballooned away. The bees and wasps are gone. I saw one harvestman a couple of days ago, and a small moth last week. It's winter. The sleepy season.

I needed a piece of lumber for a small repair, and remembered I had a plank propped against the wall in the corner of the patio, behind the compost bin. I moved the bin and retrieved it. And was surprised to see small things (and some not so small) scuttle off in all directions. It's not winter yet in that protected corner.

A couple of fair-sized spiders came along with the board.

Mid-sized Tegenaria. If you look closely, you can see that the surface of the wood is covered with spider webs.

A plump cobweb spider, probably Steatoda sp. The frass on the left includes a spider leg, either the remains of a molt, or of her unfortunate mate.

Neither of these two wanted to leave their warm board. I shooed them off, and they ran to the edge and over to the underside. I flipped the board, and they moved to the new underside. Again, and again. I finally convinced them by brushing and shaking the board vigorously, and they scooted down the side of the compost bin. There's still another board back there; they've got a few weeks more before the cold reaches them there.

Shift workers

Just outside my back door, a cobweb spider has laid claim to a gap between a post and the wall, and is raising a large family. The first of her spiderlings left their egg sac three weeks ago.

Mamma, babies, and future babies in the second sac.

Yesterday, I checked her web. There were no spiderlings; they've gone off to start their own webs. But there was a third egg sac. Busy mother!

I was standing on a stool, looking to see if any of the little ones were nearby, and almost hit a much bigger spider with my head; she's hanging right over my door where a tall man is likely to find her in his hair.

Watch your hat!

And directly above the door, in the angle between wall and ceiling, another spider was huddled, as if to keep warm, her legs pulled in close to her body. Not hunting; she's a web maker, and there was no web.

Sleeping spider.

I went out today again. The big hat-catcher was still hanging in the same place, and the sleeper hadn't moved. The days are colder now; has she just shut down for the winter, I wondered?

I just went out again, with flashlights, at 2:00 AM. There's no sign of the big spider, nor of her web. But the sleeper has built herself a messy web near her corner, and is sitting in it, waiting for night-flying critters.

Backyard bugging

October already! The leaves on my maple are a patchwork of yellow, green, and orange. The fallen ones, on the ground, are brown and yellow. A couple of squirrels are spending their days in the top branches, stuffing themselves with maple seeds; the pathway underneath is sprinkled with maimed maple "airplanes".

Down in my primroses, the slugs and snails are partying. And I found a half-dozen caterpillars, green and brown, fattening up on the leaves. I've got a few in a jar to watch them pupate, maybe even see what they turn into.

Fat brown caterpillar, sleeping

This one's much smaller.

Yellow and green, fat and still hungry.

Three fallen maple leaves.

Detail of rotting leaf

And the nasturtiums are still flowering bravely, even though they never see the sun any more.

Nasturtium and rhododendron leaf.

I found a couple of interesting spiders, and a pair of mating slugs. Photos will be forthcoming as soon as they're processed.

Of ladybugs and linden trees

The linden tree seems to be a little late this year. Or perhaps it's the aphids that are running behind schedule. It wasn't until this week that the tree started to wake up. And yesterday, I found the first ladybugs. Not the first to arrive, since some have pupated already, and at least one larva is in his last instar. Maybe they started in the top of the tree, where the sun shines almost all day.

On the leaves that I could reach, I found aphids producing honey, ants eating the honey, ladybug larvae eating the aphids, assorted wasps, including those bright orange ones, looking for a place to lay eggs, a very pretty fly all spiffed up in red eyes and blue back, who left when I touched his branch. And the adult ladybugs, supervising everything.

Aphids, full-grown, early instar, and an abandoned molted skin.

These are the  Eucallipterus tiliae, the Linden or Lime-tree Aphid. Their population will increase as the summer goes on, until every leaf has its little mob. The mature ones (see the photo above) feed on the thick veins of the leaf, where the sap flows freely. The youngsters, with much smaller feeding stylets, are restricted to the tender areas between veins.

They produce more honey than the ants can eat, so it "rains" onto the grass below the tree. The first year I noticed them, the grass was black with mould, growing on the honey. Since then, I've made sure to wash off the grass well every day or so; last year, there was no mould. None this year, so far, but we're in early days yet.

Adult, Harmonia axyridis, a 19-spotter with a mostly white pronotum. I love those shiny eyes!

Another adult, with smaller spots.

One of the ladybugs had a mostly black pronotum, although it was the same species; it had the "W" clearly marked on the front. I wanted his photo, but he was not in the mood. He ran, and I chased him, from one leaf to another, to the main branch, me getting stickier by the minute, he getting angrier, I think, because he finally dropped onto my arm. "Yay!", I thought, "Now I've got him where I can see him."

And then the little bug bit me, and flew away, muttering imprecations as he went.

The pupas don't run, and they don't bite.

The frills are the old larval skin, shed as he pupated, and glued to the leaf at his tail end. Silky threads hold him down. I'm wondering how he manages to anchor those threads, encased as he is. I'll have to watch another one pupate to see.

And I have no idea what this next thing is. It's too small, and the wrong shape, to be an abandoned ladybug pupa. There is no larval skin, and the ladybug splits her pupa down the back, leaving a black thing standing upright.

It looks as if there is a hole in the front end, where the adult insect emerged. Whether that was the original inhabitant, or a wasp that had parasitized it, I can't tell.

What is this?

Next: a weird fly in my kitchen.