Yesterday, on the last day of 2024, one of my favorite authors, Jeff VanderMeer, posted a question on the social media platform Bluesky.
His question was:
What are you grateful for from the past year? (Yes, there are lots of terrible things to be un-thankful for, but that’s not this thread.)
I am a grumpy curmudgeon when it comes to end-of-year holidays, New Year’s Eve in particular. VanderMeer’s question gave me something constructive to think about and answer. I was already thankful before I thought back through the year and found my answer.
I could have listed many things that I was thankful for. But I did not need to think for more than a couple minutes to decide what I was most grateful for in 2024. My answer:
I ended my response by posting a video of a Crotch’s Bumble Bee I observed last summer during a point survey in the Conejo Open Space.
The bumble bee was number 12 in my survey that day. Prior to the video, 12 spent some time enclosed within a vial in a cooler. After she was cool enough, I tapped her out gently onto white paper and while she was still sleepy, I took macro photographs and made notes. The photos and other information would assist the project’s biologists who review project data to confirm species and gender.
When she was warm enough, 12 climbed onto the vial cap, moving around, waking up and seemed to be testing her readiness to fly away. She departed soon after I stopped filming her, returning to the nearby Branching Phacelia where I found her gathering pollen and nectar.
