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

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Narrow

Oliver

While writing about our cat walks in the past, I remembered a hike we took with the cats up Barton Mountain behind the house. We explored the boulders and caves at the top and the cats had a wonderful time. Here, Oliver squeezed through a crevasse under a glacial erratic to try to ambush Oscar, whose legs can barely be seen on the right in the middle. Those two cats won't ever be forgotten and are sorely missed.

Photo Sunday at
Noah Clark

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Tree

There are many birches in there, but it's on a tamarack.

This is my lucky week: the theme for this week's Photo Sunday is tree. I've got a few. Thousand. When I drove in the driveway on Sunday I saw the porcupine again but from this side of the house, it was closer. The photo makes it seem as if it is in the woods. It isn't. There is a small field behind the porcupine and the tamarack tree. I zoomed iPhone in as much as possible (10x) and got this shot above. 

You can tell it's on a tamarack by all of the cones.

I went in the house and got my tripod, bug camera and dog and went back to the driveway and settled in for a long photo shoot. That didn't happen. It was too cold and the wind began to blow down the mountainside. I never even set up the tripod. Also, the porcupine did not move. I took over 67 shoots and they are all the same (they only differ in zoomosity). At one point, trying to get the porcupine to move, I yelled, "Hey, porkie! Move a little. Show me your face!" Well, that got Lucy all excited and she ran to the tree and told the porkie the same thing in doggerel. I have learned that porcupines cannot see very well but their hearing and smell are very good. So it obviously ignored us. Kids at school, animals at home, now porcupines in the wild—they all ignore what they don't want to hear.

Same pose, just more zoom.
What looked to me like an eye or nose was simply a cone.

These porcupines are actually becoming boring. They move so little. They behave the same each time I see them. I need to learn more about them to see if I can find something to observe or watch for.

Photo Sunday at
Noah Clark

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My Jagged Ambush Bugs Are Yellow

Mating Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata) 
on John's finger.

I've probably put too many photos of jagged ambush bugs in this post, but that's because they are a prize when you try to photograph insects. The Twitter photographers all remind people that the season for them has opened when goldenrod blooms. Like we need a reminder? We don't. We are all waiting. They are nearly invisible to see because they are tiny, barely move, and they can change color. I've seen green, brown, and yellow. I've read of red, white, and black ones, and I'd love to find those but I doubt I ever will. I have few red wildflowers here. I seem to find the yellow ones. Jody seems to find the green ones. Why? It may be that my flowers (wild) are mostly yellow: goldenrod, black-eyed susan, fleabanes. But Jody's are cultivated flowers that are in all colors. 

Mating Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata) 
on John's finger.

I did find this about colors on the ambush beetles the article "Ambush bugs match their habitat using choice and colour change" at Functional Ecology:

In our study, we surveyed whether ambush bugs found in the wild tended to match the flower color they were found on, and if this was correlated with how often they had prey. In lab experiments, we followed up by providing ambush bugs a choice between yellow and white flowers, as well as keeping individuals on white and yellow backgrounds to see if they would change colour over time. We found that in the wild, ambush bugs were whiter on white flowers and yellower on yellow flowers, and that better matched individuals were found more often with prey. All ambush bugs in the lab preferred yellow flowers, but this preference was especially strong for individuals who were found on yellow flowers in the wild. Finally, we found the first experimental evidence for color change in this species; ambush bugs were able to become more yellow over time but not whiter, and this was exaggerated when they were kept on a yellow background.

We now know that ambush bugs use a combination of color change and choice of habitat to optimize their ability to catch unsuspecting prey. Overall, this study improves our knowledge of how background matching is achieved in organisms using a combination of complex mechanisms.

Mating Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata) 
on John's finger.

John, my late husband, would touch anything. Brave or foolhardy? I vote for brave. He held the mating pair of ambush bugs for me because they kept wandering out of the tripod-based viewfinder and he could keep them still. They will bite, but he figured they were too busy. 😉 We always called these shots bug porn.

Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)

But I do photograph them in the wild without human aid. These bugs sit on flowers and wait for prey to come to them. They don't really move and hunt. So if you can see them, they can be fun to photograph for hundreds of focused shots. They use those fat front legs to hold on to prey, inject it with a venom that paralyzes it and then sucks its insides out. Ouch. 💀 Poor bugs.

Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)

 The males are much smaller than the females.

Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)

Some people keep ambush bugs as pets. I really have to suggest this to Jody. After all, we have raised, separately and together, flea beetles, lady beetles, moths, and butterflies. Why not some ambush bugs?  

Jagged Ambush Bugs (Phymata)

Try to find some ambush bugs next summer. Or assassin bugs (but they run after prey so are more difficult to shoot). They are related. Or not. Entomologists disagree, but are usually in the same family. There are at least two species in Phymata that cannot be differentiated in photos. 

Photo Sunday at Norah Clark

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Old: The Brief Lives of Butterflies & Moths

Mating Mustard White Butterflies (Pieris oleracea)
Old and worn on the left
New and fresh on the right

Brand new Northern Pearly-Eye (Lethe anthedon)

Old and tattered Northern Pearly-Eye (Lethe anthedon)

Luna Moths (Actias luna)
The luna on the left is male and has fully eclosed.
The female, on the right, has not completely dried after eclosing.
Her wings and tails are not fully expanded.

After one week of life, the tails are gone, the wings
are translucent, and the moth is too exhausted to move 
before dying.

Photo Sunday at
Noah Clark

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Orange Bees and Orange Flower

I think these are Ligated furrow bees

I so enjoy getting two or more animals interacting in one photo. Especially when it is focused! These bees were collecting pollen to take back to the nest to feed their larvae. It's very pleasurable to see bees again, even here, when it is all grey and brown outside.

Photo Sunday at
Noah Clark

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Phone Art

Sophie Michaud, on Red Bubble, designed my new iPhone case. I love it. I know these are not ants in the art, but somehow the design makes you think ants. Sophie is my step-granddaughter, the girl who released the Monarch with chipped blue nail polish when she was 8 years old. She's in college now. Wow.  

The design on the phone case also reminds me of her Monarch release day. It will always be one of my most special photos.

Each of her designs can be reproduced on over 25 products like mugs, wall hangings, phone cases, and shirts. I am just a grandmother here, not an Associate.  ;-)

Photo Sunday at
Noah Clark

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Goofy Lucy

Lucy used to gather green apples all day long from the orchard.
She would bring them home and spit them out after one crunch.
The apples were all drops.

Photo Sunday at
Noah Clark

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Metal

Metallic Epaulleted-Sweat bee
(Augochloropsis metallica)

Metallic Coleophora Moth
Hodges#1387 (Coleophora mayrella)

Photo Sunday with
Noah Clark

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Photo Sunday: Stairs

Fender and foster kittens

My daughter, Amelia, fosters kittens at times. One night, while she had these two rascals, she and her husband went out for some evening alone time and left Fender in charge. This was the sight when they returned home. Fender has obviously had enough of these little tornados.  

Photo Sunday with
Noah Clark

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Photo Sunday: Black

Some animals with black in their common name:

Black Arches - Hodges#10295 (Melanchra assimilis)

Black and Yellow Mud Dauber (Sceliphron caementarium)

Black bear (Ursus americanus)

Black Blister Beetle (Epicauta pensylvanica)

Black Swallowtail - Hodges#4159 (Papilio polyxenes)

Black-and-yellow Lichen Moth - Hodges#8087
(Lycomorpha pholus)

Black-and-Yellow Argiope (Argiope aurantia)

Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)

Juvenile Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)

I couldn't resist the duplication of species.

Black-etched Prominent - Hodges#7942 (Tecmessa scitiscripta)

Black-horned Smoothtail (Epistrophe grossulariae)

Blackjacket (Vespula consobrina)

Black-rimmed Prominent - Hodges#7922 (Pheosia rimosa)

Half-black Bumble Bee (Bombus vagans) and
Eastern Modest Masked Bee (Hylaeus modestus modestus)

Black-shouldered Spinyleg (Dromogomphus spinosus)

Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)

Submit your black at
Photo Sunday

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