Let's roll!

During the golden hour, right before sunset, have you ever watched a male longhorned bee roll full-barrel over a flower at Top Gun speed?

During the day, the male longhorned target assorted insects foraging on "their" patch of flowers. Their goal: to save the nectar for the females of their species, perchance to mate with them.

This bee, probably a Melissodes agilis, burst over a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, at breakneck speed. This may have been his last flight before he settled down to sleep with a cluster of other male bees.

He's promising more territorial maneuvers tomorrow...and the next day...and the next day... 

Mine. My patch of flowers.

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.

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! 

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.