Look what caught my eye today…

Its a velvet mite. Not quite an insect, but an arthropod all the same. They get their red velvet look (and name) from long, fine hairs that cover their body. They can be found in leaf litter and debris in the woods.

They are a beneficial mite (as are most mites) and feed on other mites, insect eggs, and smaller insects like aphids.

Apparently the males lay their sperm on twigs and debris on the forest floor and then lay down a silk trail that leads to the sperm (reference). Then, a female finds the trail and if the male is to her liking she sits on the sperm.

Cool, huh?

A coworker of mine has been putting together a website for his digital and watercolor artwork. He’ll be selling prints for fairly inexpensively so let him know if you are interested. If you remember, this is the same coworker (Damon Crook) that I referenced earlier here.

..and then a nice little blizzard hit upstate NY where we have been doing field work for the last couple weeks.

Bah.

Two of my coworkers are really big into hunting and fishing and watching them get all excited about animal tracks and spotting game is really funny and endearing. One of them spotted this turkey roosting in the tree while we were out at one of our sites.

The male turkeys are starting to display and I didn’t know this before, but I am told that “turkey hunting season” starts in the beginning of May. Guess who I found that out from…

But what I think is odd is that we associate turkeys and displaying males with fall and thanksgiving…not spring when they are actually doing the mating displays.

I think it is safe to say spring is here. I’ve been out in NY setting up our field studies for the last couple of weeks (see pic below) and have heard the spring peepers for the first time this week.

I also am starting to see a lot more insect activity in the woods. A coworker found these eastern tent caterpiller eggs. Each cell in the mass in an individual egg.

Then, at one of our field sites we had to cross this little stream and out of the corner of my eye I caught this little guy moving on a rock in the stream.

You may be thinking to yourself, “but Kelley, it looks like a glob of sticks??”…and you’d be sort of correct This is the case (or mobile home, if you will) of a caddisfly larva (Trichoptera). They are even cuter/cooler than snow fleas. They build their homes out of twigs, rocks, and other stream debris. The picture below is of the larva sticking its head out of the case, his/her forelegs are right up next to its head.

There are actually clever people out there you exploit this case-building behavior to make some $$ by collecting larvae and providing them with only gems/gold etc to make cases from. Then, those people are able to turn around and sell the cases as jewlery.

The next bug on my list of things I saw today was indeed a true bug.

This is my first stink bug of the season. And here is a very handsome close up of the willing individual:

My last bug, or shall I say beetle, of the day was this “twice-stabbed” ladybird beetle (Chilocorus stigma). That’s its common name, not something I wittingly came up with

They are beneficial beetles as they are predators of scale insects, aphids, mealybugs and the like.

And I will leave you with this picture of a bizzare tree that ’stumped’ me. Yeah, I know, I am a dork.

When two trees share a common bond, it must be love. Or a branch that grew into the other tree. I’m no tree expert, but somethin’ funky is going on there.