Note: All links leave to external sites. Greetings, BugFans, In late spring, BugFan Sara sent some “Who-is-this-and-what-is-it-doing??” pictures—small “bumble bees” were excavating the outer surface of a clay bread oven in her back yard. (The BugLady gave Sara bonus points …
Howdy, BugFans, Let us celebrate native bees, those often unobtrusive and always invaluable pollinators that make possible much of our landscape and many of our crops. Unfortunately, although she’s always photographing fuzzy little bees, the BugLady is pretty inept at …
Let’s celebrate the (almost bugless) Season with a dozen bugs that were photographed this year. Down through the centuries, various regional versions of the classic Christmas carol have included hares a-running, ducks quacking, badgers baiting, bulls a-roaring, biting cows, bears a-beating, cocks a-crowing, asses racing, starlings, plovers, goldspinks (goldfinches), sides of meat, ponies, deer, stalks of corn, cheese, windmills, and an Arabian Baboon. Never any bugs, though, so it’s up to us.
The first of the spring reruns, an episode from April of 2010.
“Pussy willow” is a name that refers specifically to a willow shrub called Salix discolor but is commonly applied to several small willow species (and few of us can actually tell them apart, anyway). It blooms early and copiously; the sleek, fuzzy, grey buds (an early stage of the male catkins) soon mature, producing pollen-bearing structures and attracting bunches of early spring pollinators. Especially mining bees (family Andrenidae), which are among the first flying pollinators of the year.
