Bumblebee full of pollen

By Crystal | August 14, 2015

If you plant it, they will come

By Crystal | July 12, 2015

If you know I’m talking about milkweed plants, then you know who “they” are: monarch butterflies. And I’m here to confirm the statement that “if you plant it, they will come.”

Last year we had a few milkweed plants, and this year that turned into at least 35, with more still sprouting even into July. Bugs love it.

And though we’ve seen monarchs in the past, I had never found any caterpillars. Until now.

There was evidence on more than one common milkweed plant – chewed leaves as well as frass…

… but no caterpillars were spotted until I saw a photo from a new Instagram friend that prompted me to look again. That very night I found a medium-sized caterpillar…

and then I found a newborn:

The next day, I didn’t see those two again, but I did find a giant one 20 feet away. Of course, given the small size of this milkweed, everything looks giant in comparison.

And then I saw a medium-sized caterpillar walking through the garden nowhere near milkweed.

I picked a leaf for it and it stuck around for another day before I didn’t see it again.

But then I noticed one on the underside of a leaf. I decided to keep my eye on it.

And sure enough, the next day it was in the “J” formation, signaling that it was about to begin its transformation.

Later that day it was a chrysalis! It was so well camouflaged that I almost certainly wouldn’t have seen it had I not noticed the caterpillar earlier.

I checked it morning and night for days. The “monarch lifecycle” websites say that butterflies emerge after 7 to 10 days of the chrysalis stage. Seven days passed, then ten. I was losing hope until the 12th morning, when I noticed orange and black starting to show through the green.

And then we had to go out of town for 4th of July celebrations. When we returned, the chrysalis was empty.

I was sad to have missed it, but I’m just glad that it was successful! Later that evening I noticed a monarch flying around our neighbor’s backyard – and I’m choosing to believe this was “our” monarch, making sure I noticed before it flew away.

Bee mimics

By Crystal | July 7, 2015

I keep getting fooled by flies that look like bees, a characteristic that helps ward off predators who think that they’ll sting.

First I noticed dozens of hoverflies, or syrphid flies, on spiderwort. Their bodies look like bees but they have fly heads. They’re a good pollinator.

Video

Then I noticed two different “bumblebees”:

unknown on “tiny monster” geranium

and Eristalis tenax on yarrow.

And then there’s this guy. I was walking through the garden one sunny, warm afternoon and noticed a giant bumblebee, the biggest one I’ve ever seen. It looked like a scruffy tired old thing resting on a milkweed leaf.

I ran inside to try to identify the species of bumblebee, then realized that once again that I was seeing a fly, not a bee. The good bugs that are coming to our native plants are enticing some predators, namely robber flies (or assassin flies). These flies hope that other insects will think they’re harmless bumblebees – but then they ambush the other insects.

There were at least two in the garden, as shown in this blurry video:

At that point I was too spooked and quickly fled – making sure not to turn my back to them. Though to be fair, even though they look creepy and threatening, neither was interested in sticking around when I came near.

This one was watching an American Lady butterfly five feet away, though it flew away as soon as it saw me:

American Lady butterfly

robber fly

I also saw one that had already caught a honeybee. When it saw me trying to move in closer for a photo, it dropped the poor (dead) bee and flew off.

I haven’t seen them again since that day, though I’m sure it won’t be the last time they try to make a meal out of the insects in our garden.

Pollinators galore

By Crystal | June 17, 2015

It’s pollinator week, which celebrates the bees, bugs, and birds that help about 90% of flowering plants reproduce, including about one-third of the food we eat.

That’s a good excuse for me to spend a lot of time poring over the hundreds of photos I’ve taken already this year to see how many insects I can identify. (I’m not good at bird photos.) Each year seems to bring a greater diversity of bugs to our yard, perhaps because each year we’ve been removing more grass while adding more native plants.

I had to cross three insects off this list because while they may be beneficial, I just learned that they’re not pollinators:

But many of the flying creatures in the garden are pollinators. Like this Eastern tiger swallowtail on dianthus / pinks:

I am fascinated by these teeny flies that mimic the look of bees. I first thought they were bees and searched and searched for their identity before I remembered that some flies look like bees, and sure enough, these heads look like fly heads. With that clue in hand, it took about 10 seconds to find the correct ID, syrphid flies (or hoverflies).

A bigger syrphid fly (Ceriana vespiformis) on Golden alexanders… or is it? The body looks like ceriana vespiformis, but the antennae look like a potter wasp:

About two weeks ago there were up to a dozen ladybugs crawling all over (and mating on) the yarrow at any given time. At the same time there were hundreds of aphids. Now the aphids are gone (no doubt due to the large presence of both ladybugs and damselflies) and now the ladybugs are gone, too.

The most popular plant so far has been the baptisia. It has been a, ahem, hive of activity.

Megachile centuncularis

bumblebee

hoverfly

red-belted bumblebee

wasp

honeybee

There’s no evidence yet of monarch caterpillars in our yard even though there are at least 35 common milkweed plants about to bloom, so I will share this caterpillar I saw in a friend’s yard on Sunday:

Popular goldenrod

By Crystal | October 20, 2014

The last flower to start blooming this year was one solitary goldenrod. Almost immediately, dozens of little bees found it.

I saw more types of insects on the goldenrod than I saw on any of our other flowers. Someday I hope to be able to identify bees, but for now I’ll just say there were a lot of bees. A big yellow-and-black beetle hung out for one afternoon, and several mosquitoes even stopped by frequently.