Poking Around the Pollinator Patch

In addition to all of the wildflowers we have in our own yard, we are very involved with a community garden in the municipal park behind us. We decided at the outset three years ago to set aside one of the twelve plots to be planted with (mostly) native wildflowers, especially tallgrass prairie types. Considering that if we were at this location 150 years ago, there would be some impressive tallgrass prairie habitat likely within view.

Some of the ones now in flower are:

Purple Coneflower

Oswego Tea

Wild Senna

Gray-headed Coneflower

Blue Vervain

Wild Bergamot

Boneset

 

 

With all of the hot and humid weather lately I have spent more time and in smaller amounts, heading out the back door and exploring these pollinator patches. There is always something to see. I've been able to put my macro equipment to good use. It most often consists of: a full frame camera, a 100mm macro lens, one or more extension tubes and a ring flash.

Common Milkweed is fairly abundant in both the yard and the pollinator patches. I originally planted them to benefit Monarch butterflies, and that has been successful. But with the very aromatic and numerous flowers, it has been great for attracting all sorts of other insects as well. The flower structure is quite intricate. But it is more than just a source of pollen.

 After taking a close-up of one flower, it wasn't until I got the photo on the computer that I realized there were a whole lot of tiny critters living in the flower as noted in the next two photos. It turns out that they are a type of Thrips, a tiny insect that survives by sucking out the juices of plants. They can spread disease in commercial crops, especially in greenhouses. However they are a source of food themselves, to other insects.

 Flies make use of milkweed, such as this Green Bottle Fly.

 After I took this photo of a Green Bottle Fly I noticed something else in this next one, just slightly above the fly. It is a beetle larva of some kind.

 There are some large, impressive looking wasps that frequently buzz around. This next one is the Great Black Wasp, which has a body length of about 5 cm. They are busily gathering nectar for themselves, or looking to parasitize another insect which they will take to the location where they have laid an egg. The paralyzed, but not dead, insect will be ready and waiting for the larva to feed on when it hatches from its egg.

 Another, slightly smaller wasp is this Great Golden Digger Wasp.

 With all of the wasps and bees around, I have never felt threatened by any. They are busily carrying on with their daily lives, and by moving slowly and carefully I can get within a few centimetres of these wasps.

This next one is a colourful moth, known as the Squash Vine Borer Moth. It isn't one you want to have around if you are growing things like squash or zucchini.

 Speaking of squash, this next one is a Squash Bug.

It isn't something you want to have around either, as it lays dozens of eggs under the leaves and can seriously affect the plant. The good news is that there are some insects that specialize in parasitizing these bugs, and the best known one is the Feather-legged Fly, shown next. Note the feathery extensions on its hind legs.

 Here are a variety of other insect pollinators and other invertebrates I've captured on digital film over the last few days.

Bicolored Striped Sweat Bee

Cuckoo Bee

Transverse Flower FLy

Crab Spider possibly a Misumessus sp

 This next one, a Four-spotted Sap Beetle is very small, about 4 mm.

Four-spotted Sap Beetle

A type of Fruit Fly (Strauzia sp)

 Honeybees frequently visit milkweeds, and they frequently get their legs caught in the "horns" of the milkweed flower. Some are unable to escape, and ultimately die. Sometimes if I see one struggling to get free, I will very quickly and carefully grab its body and gently tug it free. As soon as I pull my hand back I quickly release the bee so as not to get stung. So far so good! And although it is possible that on occasion a bee might lose a leg in the process, at least it has 5 other ones to carry on its activities with. This bee in this next photo had just extricated itself from a milkweed flower all on its own, and paused on the leaf of a Wild Senna nearby to recompose itself. I had time for this one photo.

 These Lace Bugs, shown next, are very tiny, only about 2-3 mm long.

Long-legged Fly

Margined Leatherwing Beetle

Morning Glory Plume Moth

Red Milkweed Beetle

Red-banded Leafhopper

Root-maggot Fly (~ 3-4 mm)

Thread-waisted Wasp

Yellow-collared Scape Moth

There are others that I have photographed that I haven't yet identified. Since I go out almost daily to photograph whatever else I can find, so there will likely be another instalment of my photos in the pollinator patch.

Creatures of the night

Last week, July 22-30, 2017 was National Moth Week. Not a lot of people spend time looking for or at moths. Most moths are active only after dark, and if they show up in headlights or porch lights, they look like a dark creature fluttering around, and one doesn't see the often quite detailed variation in colour or pattern. It takes a bit more effort than it does to search for their colourful and much more obvious cousins, the butterflies. So moth enthusiasts, generally known as 'moth-ers' have been promoting a national week to celebrate moths.

In Canada and the USA, there are apparently a little over 750 species of butterfly and 11,000 species of moth known, with new ones still being discovered. There are lots of good butterfly reference materials available; however due to the immense number of moths, and the fact that a lot are extremely small and, to most people's way of thinking, nondescript except for the large silk moths (e.g. Cecropia, Polyphemus, Luna), there are few good sources of reference material for moths. However an excellent, fairly recent moth reference is the Peterson Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America by David Beadle and Seabrooke Leckie, published in 2012. An excellent on-line source of information is the Butterflies and Moths of North America, as noted here as well as Bugguide, in this link. 

Some moths are quite visible in broad daylight, such as these first two species. This Hummingbird Clearwing is a type of Sphinx moth, sometimes seen hovering at flowers such as this Wild Bergamot.

Another one is this Squash Vine Borer moth, a far less desirable species if one is trying to grow squash in the garden. Nonetheless it is still colourful and attractive in its own right.

Squash Vine Borer

To join in the National Moth Week event, I recently set up my black light on the back patio, where there was very little competing light. I had it shining on an old white sheet that we sometimes use as a drop cloth when painting. By the time it was almost fully dark, the insects were arriving, and in fairly short order, there were several hundred of them scattered across the sheet and anywhere else there was light reflecting from the black light.

Bugs and beetles certainly outnumbered the moths by a large margin.

 Most were very small. You can see by the fine weave of the sheet that the beetle in this next image is very tiny, probably no more than about 3-4 mm in total length.

Most were difficult to identify, but some actually fit the reference material that I had access to. This next one is a type of ground beetle, probably Chlaenius aestivus.

 This is another ground beetle, known as Seedcorn Beetle (Stenolophus lineola).

Others that I photographed are as yet, unnamed. If I find out what they are, I will update this post.

But the purpose of my black-lighting was to attract moths. Again, some of them I was able to match a name to using various reference materials I had.

Epiblema sp.

Kimball's Palpita (Palpita kimballi)

Pearly Wood-Nymph (Eudryas unio)

Lesser Maple Spanworm (Speranza pustularia)

But so far, there are several others that I just haven't tracked down yet. Some were attracted to the black light itself, rather than the white sheet. These first two have now been identified via Bugguide.

Lucerne Moth (Nomophila nearctica)

Oblique-banded Leafroller (Choristoneura rosaceana)

There may be 'moth-ers' out there who can shed some light on these moths, especially the unnamed ones, so by all means, join in the discussion.