Bug Squad

When you're trying to rear Gulf Fritillary butterflies (Agraulis vanillae), expect the expected: predators. It doesn't take long for European paper wasps (Polistes dominula) to find the butterfly's host plant, the passionflower vine (Passsiflora) and prey.

"Birds do it," sang Ella Fitzgerald. "Bees do it..." "Even educated" (insert "stink bugs") "do it." But she didn't sing that; that wasn't part of Cole Porter's lyrics. But it's true. Stink bugs do it. Unfortunately. We'd rather they NOT.

Think of them as "the good guys" and "the good girls." Insects such as lacewings, lady beetles and flower flies. We're delighted to see that the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has just published a 250-page book on "Farming with Native Beneficial Insects.

When an egret swooped down and ate all the goldfish in our fish pond--quite a smorgasbord of goldies--we left the pond bare for a couple of months. The result was a good one: more damselflies.

There I was, walking across the University of California, Davis, campus to the Environmental Sciences Building for an agricultural communicators' meeting: a notebook in my hand, cell phone in my pocket, and my trusty pocket camera strapped around my neck.