One recent night David told me to come look at the deck door because there were two insects mating on it. It turned out that they were northern walkingsticks, although I have no idea why they chose to mate on our deck door.

Walkingsticks look like 3- or 4-inch-long brown twigs, and this camouflage is what keeps birds and other predators from eating them. They’re primarily found in deciduous woods, and when the female is ready to release her eggs, she deposits them singly on the ground.

One reference about them says that if a lot of females are dropping eggs at the same time it sounds like rain hitting the ground. But if I heard something like that while sitting in the quiet woods, I doubt I’d connect it to walkingsticks.

On the subject of insects, recently a reader asked me why he sees

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