- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
In his fascinating book, "Life on a Little-Known Planet: A Biologist's View of Insects and Their World," Connecticut-born biologist/entomologist Howard Ensign Evans (1919-2002) asks "What good is a butterfly?"
"To the farmer, it is an adult cabbage worm or carrot caterpillar, and better off dead. To the entomologist, it is a member of a group of diurnal lepidopterans possessing knobbed antennae, a group containing a few pest species but mainly of interest to hobbyists and dabblers. To the romantic poet, it is a stray piece of some forgotten rainbow, a vagrant wisp of eternity---but there are no longer any romantic poets to speak of. To the man of the world, the pillar of society, a butterfly is simply nothing at all."
Oh, but they bring waves of joy to gardeners. And they are pollinators!
Take the Gulf Fritillaries or passion butterflies (Agraulis vanillae) that breed on our passionflower vine (Passiflora), sip nectar from a zinnia, and flutter around the garden as if they own it. They do. It is their real estate.
Sometimes the Gulf Frits encounter a bird, a praying mantis or a spider, and sometimes they live to bring us another wave of joy. Maybe a ripple, maybe a swell, maybe a surge...but it's a wave of joy.
Thank you, Gulf Frits!
And thank you, Howard Ensign Evans, for describing them as "a stray piece of some forgotten rainbow, a wisp of eternity."
Because they are.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Ah, the fiery skipper, Hylephila phyleus!
They are, as UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Art Shapiro says, "California's most urban butterfly."
Shapiro, who has monitored the butterfly populations of Calfornia since 1972 and maintains a research website at https://butterfly.ucdavis.edu, says the fiery skipper is "almost limited to places where people mow lawns."
That would not include us. Our "lawn" is a pollinator garden.
Some interesting facts about the fiery skipper, from Professor Shapiro:
"Its range extends to Argentina and Chile and it belongs to a large genus which is otherwise entirely Andean."
- It's been in California since at least 1937.
- "It is multiple-brooded, and appears to experience heavy winter-kill in most places; scarce early in the season, it spreads out from local places where it survived, gradually reoccupying most of its range by midsummer and achieving maximum abundance in September and October."
- "Breeds mostly on Bermuda Grass (Cynodon dactylon), which despite its name is native to the Mediterranean region; probably on other turf grasses as well, including the native Distichlis spicata, which is a Hylephila hostplant in Peru and Chile! Adults swarm over garden flowers--Lantana, Verbena, Zinnias, Marigolds, Buddleia, etc., etc. and in the wild are quite happy with Yellow Star-Thistle."
How did it get the fiery skipper get its name? From the males, which are a bright orange, while the females are a dull brown.
Fiery skippers have also been described as "rapid flyers with darting movements."
That's especially true when you're focusing your camera. They dart, they dodge, they don't oblige.
Sometimes, however, you get lucky, and catch them in flight.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Have you ever seen the defensive antics of a female longhorned bee, sometimes called a sunflower bee, as she's trying to forage on flowers while a suitor is trying to get her attention? (To mate with her)
Such is the case in our family's pollinator garden as the activity on, around, above and below the Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifola) becomes fast and furious.
The female Melissodes agilis kicks a leg up as if to say "Go away! I'm not interested! Quit bothering me!" but a male posse persists.
Finally, the female will buzz off for another flower (escape!) but not for long. Here they come again!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Get off my turf!
The native bees known as Melissodes, the longhorned bees, start stirring in the early morning. First, they settle on a leaf or flower to warm up their flight muscles. Once ready to fly, they don't let up until late afternoon.
We look forward to seeing them forage and battle one another in our Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifola) patch, a key part of our Vacaville pollinator garden.
The males are extremely territorial and try to bop other insects off "their" flowers. That includes bumble bees, butterflies and males of their species. Sometimes they aim for a spider or praying mantis on their real estate. Sometimes they lose. Why are the males such bee boppers? To protect their turf, according to the lateRobbinThorp, UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor. They are trying to save the resources for the females per chance to mate with them.
If you have a camera that will allow you to set a fast shutter speed, such as 1/8000 of a second, sometimes you can freeze the action. Otherwise, they are an elongated blur as they whiz by, seemingly faster than the proverbial "speeding bullet."
The book, California Bees and Blooms, a Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heydey 2014), co-authored by University of California scientists, offers a closer look at Melissodes.
California is home to more than "1600 hundred species of undomesticated bees—most of them native—that populate and pollinate our gardens, fields, and urban green spaces," according to the authors (Gordon Frankie, Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), Rollin Coville and Barbara Ertter.) They explored 22 most common genera (and six species of cuckoo bees), describing each one's distinctive behaviors, social structures, flight season, preferred flowers, and enemies.
One of them is the Melissodes agilis that we find in our garden.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A perfect match: a bumble bee foraging on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola.
Lately we've been observing a bumble bee, identified as a maleCalifornia bumble bee, Bombus californicus, sipping nectar from the colorful orange blooms in our Vacaville pollinator garden.
B. californicus is one of 27 bumble species recorded in California, according to the four University of California authors of California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists, published in 2014 by Heyday. Gordon Frankie, Robbin Thorp, Barbara Ertter and Rollin Coville co-authored the book. Thorp (1933-2019), distinguished emeritus professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, also co-authored Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide, published in 2014 by the Princeton University Press.
Worldwide, there are 250 species in the genus Bombus. The most common bumbles we see are the yellow-faced bumble bee, B. vosnesenkii; the black-tailed bumble bee, B. melanopygus; and the California bumble bee (no yellow hairs on its face).
In California, bumble bees "are most common and diverse in the North Coast and Sierra-Cascade ranges," the authors wrote. They identified a total of 10 in urban gardens, but only three (the ones we see) are common.
"The ability of bumble bees to buzz-pollinate certain high-value crops, such as greenhouse tomatoes, has led to recent introductions from Europe to many areas of the world where they previously did not exist, especially B. terrestris, the Large Earth Bumble Bee."
If you spot a bumble bee in California, the California Bumble Bee Atlas wants to know. "Launched in 2022, the California Bumble Bee Atlas is a collaborative community science effort to track and conserve the state's native bumble bee species," according to its website. ? The group is hosting a Bumble Bee Atlas Survey Bio Blitz July 28-30. Check out the Facebook page.
You can also load your images on iNaturalist.