Bug hunting in 2021: what trends are you noticing?

From these limited observations, it sure seems like precipitation is key to proliferation. (Feel free to steal that for a bumper sticker :P )

It's been really dry here in N Il as well. Trees should be changing color, but a lot of the leaves are just dried up and already blowing off the branches. Luckily we're supposed to get some good rain this weekend.

I don't think I track arthropods as closely as y'all, so the trends I notice are big ones.

Clouds and clouds of midges in the spring.

Here in Central Arizona---and I think throughout the State and elsewhere---we've had ample precipitation since the end of June. So almost everything is bursting forth quite remarkably after severe drought, but the CRANE FLIES are like I've never seen before. I open my front door and there's a cloud of CRANE FLIES! Same in the field! I think it was the spring of 2019 when I also had a lot of CRANE FLIES, but this is noteicibly greater.

Yes CRANE FLIES, but we're also having the biggest BUTTERFLY season I can remember!!! Literally jaw-dropping! It's a CRANE FLY-BUTTERFLY madhouse out there. The really big numbers include: Sleepy Orange, Dainty Sulphur, American Snout, Variegated Fritillary (not as much as these others), Queen coming on strong, with lots of others filling in. Monarch even doing well, especially with a big burst this week. Last week I flushed something like 100 American Snout from a single, small Arizona Walnut.

Yes, populations go up and down annually---in healthy systems. Species that are in trouble just go down.

People have been communicating about the demise of arthropods for years; I got the most convincing paper from here on BugGuide. I'm not really seeing it, even in Honey Bees. I can perhaps see a downturn in species richness (which factors into species diversity), but overall decline in biomass or some other measure is difficult for me to see. I don't have the hard data.

I've seen many fewer ladybeetles, syrphids, soldier beetles, moths except tiny ones, and leafhoppers than in years past. All these were formerly abundant in my yard. Numbers of butterflies seem reduced as well, except cabbage whites, although butterflies are a harder call to make because they hadn't abounded in recent years.

This is my fourth season and the scarcity of insects here in northern New Mexico is very upsetting. The overall abundance is way down from that of previous years, also giving the impression of less diversity. This is what I observe on my photo outings, but also from the number of insects that get into this leaky house and swarm to lights at night, a nuisance in the past but a non-issue this summer, and not because of new screens!

The entire Southwest has been in a severe drought, and with the nearby creek now usually dry, I expected not to see the stoneflies and other local aquatics and semiaquatics, as was the case. Plants that bloomed for weeks (sumac, currants) this year seemed to shrivel after a few days. An exception was cactus, especially prickly pears, that did bloom for weeks.

It has been a good photo season for bees; fair for wasps and beetles, poor for flies, bugs, leps, and the rest. In past years it was hard to select just three images for daily submission out of the dozens being generated. This season on many days I've come home with only a handful of images and not due to being more selective.

This has been bothering me for weeks. Thanks, Christine, for starting this thread. I look forward to reading what others have found in other places.

but we did have a great year with derbids when we did get out.
See and
Saw some nice spiders but not much in the way of caterpillars.