A Community of Invertebrates

     Today, October 21, 2015, I visited a pond in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania from 12 noon to 1:00 PM.  I walked around a few minutes, but mostly sat on a concrete car stop between the black top parking lot and the short grass lawn by the pond.  At first, I didn't see much wildlife, except a few kinds of sparrows in a thicket, a pair of Canada geese feeding on under water algae and a few basking painted turtles.  But the car stop I was sitting on, the one on either side, and the edge of the lawn a couple of feet in front of me were bustling with invertebrate activity.  Sometimes a few species at once were visible.
     I first realized there were several invertebrates where I sat when I saw a differential grasshopper perched in the sunlight on the car stop next to mine, two black field crickets jumped along the edge of the grass in front of me, a jumping spider did a series of leaps on my car stop, and an orange-fuzzed acraea moth caterpillar crawled over the black top.  The crickets apparently live in the mat of mowed, dead grass and dead white pine needles under each car stop and occasionally come out to warm in the sunlight.  The caterpillar probably was looking for a sheltered place to spend the winter as the evenings are getting cooler now.  But the grasshopper was the most interesting insect.  It was a female that pushed the rear of her abdomen into the soft soil in several places on the edge of the lawn to deposit her eggs in that soil.      
     Now my curiosity was peaked and I watched for more insects from where I sat.  A half-banded toper dragonfly with its brown head and thorax and red abdomen landed on the car stop next to mine.  I could see its four wings were held flat and slightly forward as it rested.  This type of dragonfly is noted to fly and spawn late in October in this area.
     As I continued to watch for insects, a black ground beetle scurried from the protection of one car stop to another.  I thought that if I was a small bird or a shrew this is where I would be to catch food!
     A few each of cabbage white butterflies and yellow sulphur butterflies were on the small, white flowers of a kind of aster growing in a little clump on the edge of the lawn.  There they sip nectar.  And a monarch butterfly fluttered close by on its way to Mexico for the winter.  I hope he or she makes it.
     But in the end, it was the differential grasshoppers that stole the show.  I saw three females warming on the car stops, then spawning eggs.  Two laid eggs in the soft ground of the narrow strip between the edge of the lawn and the black top.  There the eggs probably will be protected through winter by the soil and dead grass piled on top of it.  But the third grasshopper laid her eggs in mats of dead grass and pine needles against and under the car stop next to the one I was sitting on.  I wondered if that was a good place.  If not, the embryos will die in winter's cold.  But if the young do hatch, the grasshoppers found a new place to spawn eggs, perhaps increasing their numbers.
     One can not predict where he or she will find nature's beauties and intrigues.  They are all around us and all we have to do is get out and look and listen for them, even in human-made structures.