mthew

An annual dog day Neotibicen cicada. Not to be confused with: A periodical Magicicada cicada, like this one from Princeton during this spring’s Brood X emergence. These annual cicadas are seen every year, but “annual” is a bit deceiving. The dog day cicadas spend several years underground sucking on tree roots, just like the periodical…

If you look under eaves, bridges, tunnels, and, in Green-Wood, around the nooks and crannies of mausoleums, you might very well find some of these mud tubes. After all this construction work, the female Organ-pipe Mud-dauber hunts for spiders, which she paralyzes and stuffs into chambers within each tube. Each chamber gets an egg. The…

Megachile genus leaf-cutter bees cut out circles of leaves to line their nests. Another characteristic of this huge genus is that they carry pollen on the underside of their abdomen. So that glow you see is actually pollen in the hairs. Honey bees, bumble bees, and other bee species typically pack it around their hind…

Nine days between sighting a trio of Green Heron fledglings in Green-Wood Cemetery and then re-seeing of all three of them together again. In between, there were a few days of seeing two of the fledglings at the same time. A fraught time that was! Did one not make it? But they’re still a triumvirate,…

Wasps don’t get much credit for pollinating flowers, but there’s no escaping the pollination-reach of Spotted Horse Mint (Monarda punctata) A Four-toothed Mason Wasp (Monobia quadridens), above, shows pollen on wings, thorax, and even some of the abdomen. Great Black Digger Wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus). When I first saw one of these flitting rapidly between these…

Sunday mornings, traditionally (in some traditions), are for passing the plate.