It's Thanksgiving Day, and what better day to stop and be thankful for not only family and friends, but for the beauty around us.

That would include insects, including the stunning Western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus).

Last summer we enjoyed watching a very gravid female, with a three-to-four-inch wingspan, nectaring on a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) in our Vacaville pollinator garden.

She also nectared on Verbena before departing--probably to lay her eggs on a nearby host plant, liquidambar (sweet gum) or a sycamore.

For just a few minutes, the Western tiger swallowtail graced our pollinator garden with her breathtaking beauty. We are thankful for her presence, and the presence of all the pollinators, past, present and future, in our little pollinator garden.

"Without the actions of pollinators, agricultural economies, our food supply, and surrounding landscapes would collapse," points out the Pollinator Partnership. "Birds, bats, bees, butterflies, beetles, and other small mammals that pollinate plants are responsible for bringing us one out of every three bites of food."

Happy Thanksgiving!

When a house is a home...

Take the case of a syrphid fly, aka hover fly or flower fly. It's a cold and windy day, and it's tucked in the folds of a rock purslane, Calandrinia grandiflora, in Vacaville, Calif.

It's sipping nectar, and rotating its colorful little body to gather more nectar and glean more sun.

The syrphid fly is often mistaken for a honey bee. Both are pollinators.

 Three of the easiest ways to differentiate a fly from a bee:

• A fly has one set of wings. A bee has two sets.
• A fly has short, stubby antennae. A honey bee doesn't.
• A fly has no corbicula or pollen basket. A honey bee (worker bee) does.

Last year Joanna Klein posted an interactive feature in the New York Times, wondering how we can save the bees if we don't recognize them.  She asked "Can You Pick the Bees Out of This Insect Lineup?" and posted an image of bees and wanna-be bees.

Find the flies.

And then access a PDF on flower flies on the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources website to learn more about them. Authored by lead author/entomologist Robert Bugg, it's titled "Flower Flies (Syrphidae) and Other Biological Control Agents for Aphids in Vegetable Crops." 

"George Compere."

Non-entomologists may not recall his name, but entomologists--especially those who study biological control--definitely do.

And whether you do or don't, you'll want to see the display featuring George Compere (1858-1928),  at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis. The memorabilia, gifted to the Bohart Museum by a Compere relative, is cased in the hallway fronting the door of the Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, Crocker Lane.

In the display, titled "Life and Death of a Government Entomologist in the Last Century," Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and UC Davis professor of entomology, posted that "Compere was one of the premiere explorers in the history of biological control. He was stationed at what is now the University of California, Riverside."

Born in Davenport, Iowa, Compere worked for the Western Australia government "to collect parasites and investigate the potential for biological control of many insects," including the Mediterranean fruit fly, according to a Western Australian website. "By 1904, Compere was working for both the Californian and Western Australian governments, collecting parasites and predators from all over the world."

The Bohart Museum display includes an image of him, the typewriter he used, his badge, his pen, and a copy of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner magazine feature on him, "If A Fly Should Come to California," published on Feb. 8, 1903.

A non-dated news story, headlined "George Compeer (sic) Injured," noted that "George Compeer (sic), inspector at quarantine for the State Horticultural Commission, was seriously injured in the bay yesterday when he fell from the Jacob's ladder while attempting to disembark" from a freighter onto the tug of the U.S. Golden Gate. The exhibit also includes a letter of sympathy from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to his widow.

The  Sunday Examiner magazine article called attention to "Why George Compete Has Started Around the World with a Magnifying Glass to Find a Bug and Why It is Vitally Important to the Fruit Industry that His Search Be Successful."

An excerpt from the magazine:

"BECAUSE a Fly, in advance of as terribly devastating an army of insects as ever set its plague hold upon a fertile land, came in an evil hour to Australia, George Compere of California has started around the world to find the insect that preys upon the destroyer.

"Every insect has its own particular enemy. Mr. Compere will continue to search until he finds the specimen for which he is sent. His success affords the only hope of salvation for Australia's fruit growers. He will carry the search, if necessary, into every portion of the globe where an insect can thrive. He has been employed by the Australian Government to perform this singular errand.

"En route, Mr. Compere stopped long enough in San Francisco to thoroughly acquaint the Board of Horticulture with the new danger which deserves their attention.

"If one of these flies should come to California," said Mr. Compere with simple earnestness--the simplicity of an expert knowing whereof he speaks and the earnestness of a man who has the interests of his home State lying near his heart--"If one of these flies were to come to California the consequences might be fatal to the fruit industry here for all time to come."

"These words were not idly spoken, for Mr. Compere is a careful, conservative man, who, realizing the power of the pest whose annihilation depends upon his endeavors, is gravely apprehensive for the safety of the State. With far-seeing eyes he beholds the picture of desolation that our fair land would present were the dreaded Fly to reach here before he finds its antagonist.

"The warning has been heeded. Sentinels at the orchard outposts of California are watching with the utmost vigilance every sort of craft that sails from the antipodes through the Golden Gate. These sentinels are the members of the board, and down at the docks they guard the State's splendid orchards from chance invasion by the worst enemy that could enter their domain. This enemy is the Queensland Fly.

"For many miles around Queensland the farmers have been burning their beautiful trees and sadly setting themselves to the only task they may now venture upon without ruin to themselves. They are either converting their acres to pasture land, or plowing and planting to reap such products as wheat and barley in place of the fruits that were their pride and their means of maintenance until a Fly came to Queensland on a vessel from the Mediterranean.

"The glory of California lies in the vast yield of fruit which is sent to the ends of the earth, and in return comes golden tribute from almost every civilized country. The greater part of the valuation of real estate in California arises from the fact that fruit either is growing or can be grown upon its acres.

"Misfortune unspeakable would come upon us if, as in Queensland, the orchardists, weary and defeated in a fight against a creeping army of fruit destroyers, should give up in despair, make fuel of the trees and convert to wheat and cattle raising the orchards that have supported the great canneries, dryers and fruit shippers. Hence we shall follow the quest of George Compere with more interest than all the stories of battles between the nations. for somewhere under the sun is the parasite of the Queensland Fly, and in a glass case no bigger than is necessary to inclose one orange or peach tree can be bred enough of the soldiers of that tribe to defend all the orchards of California.

"There are those who will doubt that a few flies could ever increase to such appalling numbers as to make the great State of California fruitless, yet one gypsy moth escaping from a box in an Eastern State is now costing the local government there $100,000 a year to hold it in check. It eats, when in the caterpillar form, every green thing which is in its way. And hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of apples are destroyed in California by the codling moth yearly because a farmer sent East to his old home for a barrel of apples to exhibit at the State Fair. That was before there was any Board of Horticulture, and the judges, finding the apples wormy, were at a loss what to do with them Not assuming the authority to destroy them and not realizing their blunder, they allowed the farmer to take them back to the farm on his promise not to let the worms get away. But they did get away and now the codling moth eats half the apple crop of California."

George Compere's son, Harold, born in 1896, followed in his scientific footsteps, becoming an internationally known taxonomist, expert biologist and biological control historian.

Monarchs: you can't save them all.

It was a dismal year in Vacaville (and other parts of California) for monarch-rearing. Of the 10 caterpillars we collected from milkweed in our pollinator garden in early September and tried to rear, only eight made it.

One caterpillar died when a sibling attacked it. Another caterpillar made it to the chrysalis stage, and then it succumbed.

"The intersegmental membranes are showing," observed butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, who has researched butterflies for more than four decades and maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu. "Whatever caused that, it opens the door to severe water loss, so the pupa will probably die."

Yes, it did.

Black lines rimmed the non-viable chrysalis, and then it deteriorated almost beyond recognition.

Lynn Epstein, UC Davis emeritus professor of plant pathology, photographed it under a Leica DVM6 microscope on Nov. 2. An amazing image.

Meanwhile, perhaps the eight monarchs we reared and released made it to an overwintering site along the California coast...maybe to the eucalyptus grove at the Natural Bridges State Park, Santa Cruz.

Or maybe they encountered a predator--a praying mantis or a bird.

Regardless, the declining monarch populations at the overwintering sites along coastal California are troubling.

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, based in Portland, Ore., noted in a news release Feb. 2, 2018 that the "annual census of monarch butterflies overwintering along California's coast reveals that populations in western North America are at their lowest point in five years, despite recovery efforts. Volunteers with the Xerces Society's Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count visited more sites this past year than have ever been counted since the survey began in 1997, yet they tallied fewer than 200,000 monarchs."

“This year's numbers indicate a continuing decline in the monarch population,” noted Sarina Jepsen, the Xerces Society's endangered species program director. “Two decades ago, more than 1.2 million monarchs were recorded from far fewer coastal sites, and just last year nearly 300,000 monarchs were observed at almost the same number of sites.” Population estimates at individual sites also suggest that the western monarch population has continued to shrink. Of the 15 sites which have been monitored annually for more than two decades, 11 had lower counts than last year."

Also in the news release, Emma Pelton, conservation biologist with Xerces, said: “Counts at some of the state's largest sites were dramatically lower. Pismo Beach State Park was down by 38 percent, a private site in Big Sur was down by 50 percent, and the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in Pacific Grove was down 57 percent, from 17,100 to just 7,350 butterflies.”

Xerces Society officials also noted that "the few sites in which monarch numbers remained stable or increased compared to 2016, include Natural Bridges State Park, Moran Lake, and Lighthouse Field State Park, all in Santa Cruz County."

We like to think that The Vacaville Eight were The Lucky Eight.