Rewilding My Lot

I quite often see insects wrapping leaves around themselves or constructing cages of leaves to protect their young. When this happens in fall or winter, these may be insects that are trying to stay protected from the weather for a few hours or days, or even preparing to survive the whole winter.

This is why a wildlife habitat should include places for shelter, such as evergreen plants, leaf litter, and hollow stems. I have all of these, although not much leaf litter since my trees are so small.

Here are a few examples of the many sheltering behaviors that I have seen.

For a couple of days when it was cool in fall I saw this Lady Beetle sheltering between two Texas Mountain Laurel leaves. I don’t think the Lady Beetle had produced the silk that was holding the leaves together — I think more likely it was sheltering in a structure that something else had built.

Towards the end of the Paper Wasp season in the fall, I would often see a few of them huddled together in leaves of the Mexican Olive tree, especially if the leaves had curled to provide more shelter.

There are at least two of these cocoon-type structures on the Mexican Plum tree and one on a Live Oak tree. They appeared weeks ago, and so I think they will stay that way through the winter.

Something has stuck together a tangle of Gulf Muhly stalks. I think it’s probably a sheltering structure of some sort, but I’m not going to pick it apart to find out what.

Here’s an update on the two Yellow Garden Spider egg sacs that were produced in September and October 2024. Momma spider built a large web outside our garage door and produced two egg sacs before she eventually died. To get the potentially hundreds of spiderlings away from the house, I relocated the egg sacs to a nearby oak tree and that is where they are likely to stay until the spiderlings emerge in spring. Given how windy it gets here, I am impressed by how strong the web silk is to keep them attached to the tree. They are still secure in December 2024.