First Spring Hymenoptera

It's a bee. 

Update: it is a Small Carpenter Bee (Genus Ceratina).

When Lucy and I went outside to check our daffodils yesterday, I noticed an insect or two crawling in this bloom. It's a bee! My instinct, such as it is, says it is a masked bee (see cropped version below), but they are not documented to be out this early. Nomad bees are out this early, though, so it may be that. I gave a masked bee identification to iNaturalist, though, because the bee people have been swarming all over bee photos all winter making sure that IDs are correct. They will come across this and if it is wrong, they will quickly correct it.

Masked bee or nomad?
Both are native.

Last week I sat outside at the school's picnic table and beheld a cold fly trying to warm itself in the sun. The antennae are wrong for the order Diptera (flies), as were the head, eyes and wings. The venation and the antennal flagellomeres led me to the order Hymenoptera (wasps, bees, and ants), which led me to sawflies, which led me to the Family Tenthredinidae — Common Sawflies. I checked the Vermont phenology for sawflies and have concluded, rightly or wrongly, that this is a male Dolerus unicolor. No one on iNat pays too much attention to sawflies, though, so I don't know when I will be affirmed—if I ever am. And that's a shame. Sawflies have become one of my favorite families. 

Perhaps Dolerus unicolor

That is Spring in northern Vermont as of this date. But where there is one bug there are thousands more! We made it through the winter.

😂

Photo Sunday

_/\_/\_

Skywatch Friday: Spring in Vermont

Seymour Lake, Morgan, Vermont
Noon
Thursday, April 27, 2023

I think I have made it through winter. There have been many misadventures and much bad weather. My car lost its brakes twice, I had to be pulled out of a ditch that I went into when pulling off the road during a whiteout. The new furnace is wonderful but the times we live in require $1,000 fuel deliveries. I don't know how I got through it all. But I am optimistic: there probably won't be anymore snow. I am even going to try scheduling my summer tires very soon (the first of May is traditionally when we all switch off our winter tires). 

There have been very few signs of spring at my house. There are unidentified small birds flitting about. Lucy says she has heard owls hooting in the woods. I have heard what I call the summer song of the chickadees and seen crows moving back to the woods from the village, where they like to overwinter. My apple orchard still has not bloomed, but it's probably still too early. The pussywillows, below, finally appeared April 18. Jody has photographed a queen bumble searching for a nesting place. I have started going back to church in person, and Jody and I even went to a restaurant for breakfast like the pre-COVID days. We ate outside. But we were out.

Pussywillow in full bloom on April 18.

Today at Seymour Lake in Morgan, I saw the season's first loons! A pair of them. From the top photo of the lake you can see how dark it was at noon when I saw them. So my photos are simply awful but they do document that I saw the birds. They are devilishly hard birds to photograph because they dive so deep and swim so far underwater. 

I'm tired of reading, bread making, movies and TV. I need life! This is the first day that I have had anything worthwhile to post since February vacation (back when I wasn't tired of making bread). I hope all of you are enjoying a spring full of life, bird song, and insect buzzes.

Skywatch Friday

_/\_/\_