November Bugs

[ CW: spiders ]

The first frosts have arrived which means most bugs have now died off or have started to overwinter. I will miss them over the next four months, but thankfully November still had a few smaller bugs hanging around the garden for me to look at, including some I've been wanting to meet for a while.

The first of these are globular springtails!

There's a large black bin in the garden that I think is supposed to be a compost bin, but we just fill it up with soil. When it rains heavily enough the bin floods causing the various soil dwelling creatures inside to float up to the surface, which in this case are springtails.

Springtails are completely waterproof so they're in no danger of drowning (in fact they seem quite comfortable just floating along the surface of the water), but I put some leaves in the bin anyway so they have something to rest on/eat.

Four photos of a tiny round springtail. It has two dots for eyes and has a body that is almost as wide as it is long. On its rear-end are a number of thin spines.

It was exciting to find this type of springtail as I've now seen all three of the major springtail groups! I found some Poduromorpha and Entomobryomorpha springtails earlier in the year, and this springtail belongs to the Symphypleona group which are recognisable by how rotund they are.

There is potentially a fourth group, the Neelipleona, but whether they exist as their own distinct group or as a suborder to the globular springtails is apparently controversial among taxonomists. I'd love to find some one day but photographing Neelids is basically impossible with my current equipment; they're so small that I would need either an extremely good macro lens or a microscope to even see them.


This is a whitefly, a creature so white my camera had trouble capturing it. It's super reflective!

There are loads of these flying about in late Autumn and early winter but normally they're found on the undersides of leaves, drinking sap from the plant's veins. Like aphids, they're considered garden pests, but I still love them. They're very angelic looking creatures.

A bright white insect resting on a wooden surface. Its wings are shaped like teardrops.

Whilst watching the fence posts for bugs, I came across a few of these bur-like snags sticking out of the wood. I had to stare at them for a few minutes to be sure they were moving, but I soon realised these are bagworms! This species is probably Luffia lapidella which normally builds its cone-shaped cases out of algae and grains of sand, but there's barely any sand in my garden so I not sure what this case has been woven from. Perhaps some of the lichen that grows on the wood?

Either way the case is very cool, particularly the banded stripes that run around the cone.

Two photos of a bagworm's cone-shaped case on a beam of wood. The case is curved and bumpy, and has rings of lighter and darker brown running around its circumference. In one of the photos, the bagworm's head is barely visible from underneath the hood of the case.

I also took some footage to prove they are moving and it wasn't just my imagination. Right at the end of gif you can briefly see the bagworm's head poking out of its case.

Animated gif of the bagworm slowly crawling along the wooden post.

Finally here is a tiny orb weaver I found in the flowers. Don't have much to say about it, I just liked how it contrasted the violet petals in the background.

A small grey spider hanging from a strand of silk. In the background are bright violet flower petals.