Posts Tagged: sedum
A Miss Is as Good as a Mile
A miss is as good as a mile...or a smile. The Buckeye (Junonia coenia) is a striking butterfly patterned with eyespots and white bars. We saw one today nectaring on sedum, but with chunks of a wing missing. Perhaps a bird or a praying mantis tried to...
Buckeye butterfly on sedum. Note the missing chunks of its wings. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Sideview of Buckeye butterfly-almost a meal for a predator. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
An intact Buckeye on sedum. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A Streak of Gray
if it's a streak of gray, you don't wash it away. You welcome it. The gray hairstreak butterfly (Strymon melinus) is common on our sedum, a good fall plant for pollinators, including butterflies, honey bees, sweat bees and syrphid flies, aka...
A gray hairstreak foraging in sedum. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A honey bee joins a gray hairsteak on a sedum blossom. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
The Imposter
"If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck," or so the saying goes. But if it looks like a honey bee, moves around on blossoms like a honey bee, and feeds on nectar and pollen like a honey bee, it may not...
Drone Fly
Honey Bee
Crab Spider Nails a Fly
The crab spider didn't go away hungry.Camouflaged in the petals of a sedum, the cunning predator waits patiently for its prey.An unsuspecting blowfly lands inches from the crab spider, unaware of its presence, and crawls toward it.Wham! The crab spider...
The Encounter
Ambush
Paralyzing Bite
Better Grip
Dinner
The Hunter and the Hunted
The crab spider is a clever and skillful hunter. Last Sunday we spotted a camouflaged crab spider (family Thomisidae) lying flat on a sedum. The spider's pink and white abdomen blended so well into the pink and white blossoms that you couldn't...
Spider and the Bee
Dinner?
Spider Legs
Over and Out