- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So here's this hungry male monarch butterfly sipping nectar from a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia "Torch").
He's sipping, sipping, sipping. He's minding his own business. He's tending to his own needs. It's a good day in the pollinator garden.
Suddenly a bulletlike object dive-bombs his head. It returns and dive-bombs his wings. It returns again and dive-bombs his feet.
"Hey, this is my territory. I am claiming all of the Tithonia. I'm saving it for my ladies. Move!"
It's a male longhorned bee, Melissodes agilis. It's also known as an "agile longhorned bee." Agile? Because it is.
The territorial battle continues. Two boys, two different insect species, each trying to claim "The Torch."
Finally, the monarch lifts off and flutters over to another blossom.
"Hey, that's mine, too!"
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
No matter how many we see or how often we see them, we can't get enough of the Gulf Frits.
That would be the Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae), a brightly colored orangish-reddish butterfly with silver-spangled underwings. It's also known as the passion butterfly because its host plant is the passionflower vine (Passiflora).
Depending on what you see first--the brilliant orange or the gleaming silver--the Gulf Frit appears to be two butterflies. Two dazzling butterflies.
Butterfly guru Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at te University of California, Davis, calls it a "dazzling bit of the New World Tropics...introduced into southern California in the 19th Century --we don't know how-- and (it) was first recorded in the Bay Area before 1908, though it seems to have become established there only in the 1950s."
We've observed the Gulf Frit almost year around in Yolo and Solano counties. Once we saw it laying an egg on Christmas Day in Vacaville (Solano County). What a gift!
As the year slips to a close, and spring beckons, we anxiously await the welcoming sight of a fluttering butterfly touching down on a gently swaying blossom. Like a Gulf Frit on a long-stemmed Mexican sunflower (Tithonia).
The butterfly is a flying flower,
The flower a tethered butterfly.
~Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Everyone's talking about the drones.
You know, the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Those flying robots cruising over our heads--some with cameras for journalistic and research purposes and others with "need-to-know" purposes.
But in the entomological world, the word "drone" usually means a male honey bee. Or a fly. A drone fly.
To the untrained eye, the common drone fly (Eristalis tenax) looks somewhat like a honey bee, and flies somewhat like a honey bee. It feeds off pollen and nectar.
But the larva is known as a rattailed maggot and feeds off bacteria in drainage ditches, manure or cess pools, sewers and the like.
Like a worker honey bee, the adult drone fly is a pollinator and is often mistaken for a honey bee. Unlike a honey bee, however, it has one set of wings, large eyes, stubby antennae, and a distinguishing "H" on its abdomen.
Coming soon to a field near you--a drone (flying robot) and a drone fly (flying fly). Neither causes diseases nor sucks blood.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Privacy, please!
You're walking by a patch of lavender and Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) and you notice that two Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae) are doing what birds 'n' bees 'n butterflies do.
Well, some folks call it "bug porn" and some call it a "two-for" images--two insects in one photo. But in this case, this was a "three-for" image. A honey bee nectaring on the nearby lavender photobombed my image and the mating pair, still attached, clumsily fluttered off in a four-wing attempt. Appropriately enough, they headed over to the pasionflower vine, their host plant
We recall butterfly expert Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, telling us several years ago that the showy reddish-orange butterfly is making a comeback in the Sacramento-Davis area. In the early 1970s, it was considered extinct in that area.
“It first appeared in the vicinity of San Diego in the 1870s,” he related in a previous Bug Squad blog. “It spread through Southern California in urban settings and was first recorded in the Bay Area about 1908. It became a persistent breeding resident in the East and South Bay in the 1950s and has been there since.”
Shapiro says it “apparently bred in the Sacramento area and possibly in Davis in the 1960s, becoming extinct in the early 1970s, then recolonizing again throughout the area since 2000.”
One of the Gulf Frit's favorite nectar sources is lantana (genus Lantana, family Verbenaceae.) In our yard they also lean toward the lavender and Tithonia.
There, on appropriate occasions, they like a little privacy.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Whether you call them "praying" mantis or "preying" mantis, one thing is for sure: they are difficult to find.
Tucked away in vegetation and as quiet as "the proverbial mouse" (except praying mantids are more quiet than the "proverbial" mice), they are an eye exercise in "Find me!"
As autumn approaches, our little bee garden is nearing the end of its life. The Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) and lavender are fading rapidly. However, honey bees and other pollinators continue to forage, and the mantids are still hungry. The female mantids, mothers to be, need more high-quality food. Ootheca!
We're all accustomed to seeing praying mantids grab their struggling prey with their spiked forelegs and munch away. Usually that movement alerts us to their whereabouts.
But have you ever just searched for mantids in their habitat? See if you can find them in these photos.
Find the praying mantis!