Bug Squad

Dragonflies occasionally hang around our fish pond to catch flying insects, such as flies and mosquitoes. Last weekend a gorgeous flame skimmer swooped down in our garden--a few yards from our fish pond--and landed on a bamboo stake. She absolutely glowed in the late afternoon sun.

Florian Altermatt (right) describes himself as a "keen biologist and naturalist." "I'm interested in community ecology, metapopulation, biologoy and evolutionary biology. Besides that, my pleasures are--as Vladimir Nabokov said once-the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.

The Campus Buzzway is buzzing with bees. The quarter-acre wildflower garden, located by the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.

Every insect looks prettier when it lands on a tower of jewels (Echiium wildpretti). When in full bloom, the 9-to-10-foot-high plant, native to the Canary Islands, blazes with firecracker-red flowers. It's a showstopper.

When we think of pollinators, we usually think of honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, syrphid or flower flies, and butterflies. But wait, blow flies can be pollinators, too.