It's Sept. 4, 2019. We notice a monarch butterfly laying eggs on milkweed in an enclosed Vacaville retail nursery. We purchase the plant and add it to our pollinator garden. Did the eggs ever hatch? Did we ever get caterpillars, chrysalids and adults? No. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
If you're trying to find a praying mantis in the wild, go where the food source is. Sounds pretty easy, right? But oh, they're camouflaged. They lie in wait, as ambush predators, and strike. Now you see the predator, now you don't.
Hello, Friday Fly Day! It's time to post an image of syrphid fly, aka hover fly or flower fly. We took this dorsal view of a syrphid fly in January of 2009.
