Bumble Bees will not attend your picnic. Yellow jackets (Vespula pensylvanica) on the other hand, will crash your picnic, particularly in late summer. Yellow jackets. Who likes them? They do not rank on my top ten list of favorite insects, but I have learned that they play an important role in maintaining balance in the… Continue reading Bumble Bees Will Not Attend Your Picnic
Year: 2017
Bumble Bees, Honey Bees and Milkweed
“Trees remind us how busy and unstable we are, and how ridiculous that is.” —Rebecca Solnit, A Childhood of Reading and Wandering “Imagine your whole life in a few months, everything accelerated. We must seem as slow as a tree to them.” —Bert Wilson, Yellow-Faced Bumble Bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) As I child I feared all stinging… Continue reading Bumble Bees, Honey Bees and Milkweed
Our Closest Neighbors Are Birds
Several avian neighbors regularly flout our home owners association rules by installing custom built additions on our house from late spring into the summer months. Of course our human neighbors are not aware of the nests and even if they were, it is against the law to move or destroy an active nest. While the… Continue reading Our Closest Neighbors Are Birds
Backyard Monarch Project: A Year Later
I am so behind on planned posts! I have a piece of digital artwork featuring the western tiger Swallowtail butterfly that I want to include in a post that discusses the Swallowtail in some detail, but I am only about halfway through the layers that I am using to create a composite image. So, I… Continue reading Backyard Monarch Project: A Year Later