bees
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Pollen Bumble Rumble
Flying between these absurdly large flowers of hybrid rose mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos), this bumblebee was practically glowing yellow from all the pollen.But note how the wings remain mostly clean. Bees are hairy, the hairs statically charged to help pollen stick to them. Of course, you wouldn’t want your wings to be laden with pollen or…
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Some Pollinators
It’s National Pollinator Week, but we should be thanking the bees — and other pollinators — every day for the work that they do. And fighting like the dickens the exterminationists of the agribusiness/pesticide complex.
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TX Insects
Walking Stick on Peter’s bins. Texas has at least 16 species. Leaf-cutter ant (Atta texana) highway. The ants are returning to their sprawling underground colonies with leaf fragments, which, farmer-like, they feed to the fungus they actually eat.Thornbush Dasher (Micrathyria hagenii).Band-winged Dragonlet (Erythrodiplax umbrata).Antlion. This is the adult stage.We saw many antlion traps, where buried…
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Dead Wood?
The fence posts in Brooklyn Bridge Park are made from Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), a durable, naturally rot-resistant wood. Of course, like anything in a natural environment, even one as heavily managed as this, it will end up having more than a single, intended purpose.The top, for instance, is a great place for birds to…
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Slow Morning
By which I mean a chilly morning, according to bumble bee standards. Burly little things, they warm themselves up by muscular action on chilly spring mornings, getting the jump on other pollinators who are smaller and more solar-powered. This looks like a Bombus impatiens, which, for all I know, is how you look on Monday…
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Early Fall
Yesterday morning around 10, it was under 60F and cloudy. The bumblebees were not quite warmed up. Some didn’t move at all, others were quite sluggish. Burly little things, with lots of muscle, which is one of the reasons they are one of the first flying bugs in the spring. They can warm themselves up…
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Habitat
Brooklyn Bridge Park’s horticulturalist Rebecca McMackin told me recently that she consciously works to create habitat. The proof is in the animals: Spot-winged glider (Pantala hymenaea), a new species for me. A reader of this blog, in private conversation, noted how the carrion beetle thing yesterday was a little queasy, but I personally find these…
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Short-horned Long-horn
Genus Melissodes, a long-horned bee. The females don’t have the really long horns (actually they are antennae). Note the hairy legs thick with pollen.A solitary bee. There are more than a dozen species in New York. Sunflowers are one of their main food sources.
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Hymenoptera
Last weekend, I visited the Flatbush Gardener’s garden. The highlight was the mountain mint, alive with pollinators. I mean, jumping with pollinators: several species of bees, wasps, flies, and butterflies going at it. Here are a couple of the highlights: Great Golden Digger Wasp, Sphex ichneumoneus.One of the grass-carrying wasps of genus Isodontia. Cuckoo bee,…
Backyard and Beyond 