Top Photo: Eastern phoebe awaits airborne insects. These hardy flycatchers will be with us for most of the winter. The weather is delightful and so are the sights outdoors at the museum. But, you have to be there to see them. Abelia is still blooming and attracting visitors at the Butterfly House Garden. It’s a non-native species but not considered invasive. A carpenter bee buzzes by goldenrod in the garden along the stairway and ramp leading to the Butterfly House.Read more
Posts tagged: #Honey Bee
June Sightings in The Wild
It’s near the end of June. Below (and above) are photos of some of the creatures I’ve seen during the month. They’re arranged in no particular order. The top photo is of one of the milkweeds, butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). It attracts many insects to it’s flowers, leaves, and seed pods throughout the summer season. Here, you can see new flower buds on the left and older flowers to the right. Some insects go out of their way to attractRead more
Visiting Sumac
Dwarf sumac was in bloom this past week along the north side of the Wetlands. There were many insects visiting the tiny greenish flowers. Here, in the photos below, are a handful of those visitors. Carpenter bees drill holes in trees, or the wood facia or siding of your house, creating separate chambers within the tunnels, and stocking each chamber with pollen and nectar. They lay an egg in each chamber and seal it off. The young thatRead more
The bees are buzzing
Top Photo: Honey bee on algae covered rock in Hideaway Woods. Starting in early November the Mahonia on our Dino Trail begins to bloom. Its tiny yellow flowers work their way up the plant’s long racemes. If there are any active insects about, here’s where you’ll find them, extracting nectar and, in the process, pollinating the plants. There’s no real way of knowing (without marking them) if the honey bees that I see at the Mahonia at this time ofRead more
Spring at the Museum?
It’s December not April. What’s going on with the wildlife here at the Museum. Ranger Lew saw a Northern Water Snake on Saturday (12/3). Spring Peepers were calling and Yellow-bellied Sliders were out basking in the near 70 degree air of yesterday afternoon (12/6). Neither peepers or basking Turtles are unusual during this time of year though, a few days of warm temps is often enough to bring either of those herps out of hiding, even in the dead ofRead more
Signs of the Seasons
Two sure signs of the changing seasons are the tap-tap-tap high up in the pines of the Brown-headed Nuthatches excavating nest holes, and ee-awKEEEE of the Red-winged Blackbirds in the Wetlands. We hear, and see, the nuthatches each year at this time as these little dynamos drill one, two, three or mores cavities into the soft wood of the pines. For all of their work they more than likely only use one of the holes to actually nest in. TheRead more
Aquatics, Early Butterflies, and Bees and Wasps
Although the first few days of March were cold and snowy, by the end of the first week it had warmed enough so that many insects, absent for months, were once again busily going about their daily routines. Aquatic insects observed in the Wetlands during the first half of March were Whirligig Beetle, various diving beetles, Water Boatman, Backswimmer, and Water Strider. Cabbage White, Falcate Orangetip (3/11), Sleepy Orange, Orange Sulphur, Spring Azure (3/11), Questionmark, Mourning Cloak (3/11), and AmericanRead more
Exploratory Outing
The warm weather which arrived on the 7th of February brought out two butterflies that winter as adults tucked away under tree bark or in small cavities in trees: a well-worn American Snout and an equally worn Questionmark. A very fresh Sleepy Orange was also seen and had apparently emerged from a chrysalis not long prior to being observed flying along the path on the north side of the Wetlands. A paper wasp seen on February 2 was slowly walkingRead more