I visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in February, hoping to find two of my favorite subjects to photograph: butterflies and native bees. This was my third visit to the Museum.
The descriptive noun Museum is, in my opinion a misnomer, when one considers the breadth of all that the grounds contain. Living animals are not usually found in the typical Museum, except perhaps for the popular tropical butterfly pavilion feature which probably sells lots of tickets, from Manhattan to Tucson. (This Museum did not have a butterfly pavilion, but there is one nearby at the Tohono Chul gardens.)
The Museum exhibits many living creatures as well as ancient fossils and a variety of educational displays. Short trails on the grounds feature distinct desert habitats including cactus, desert shrubs and trees and some of the animals that live in the region. Along one or two trails visitors will find very large mechanical dinosaurs, a fun way for children to get a sense of what dinosaurs might have looked like.
I was there for the pollinators. It had been a dry winter in the southwest thus far, so there was not much blooming in the parks. The Museum, I thought, might have some blooming plants on display and maybe some of those blossoms would be attractive to a native bee or a butterfly.
Photographing insects that are busy collecting pollen and nectar requires patience and practice. The availability of these attributes are dependent upon a person’s interest level in observing and learning about the smaller creatures with whom we share the planet. While I started with and still have an enduring interest in wildflowers, flowering shrubs and trees, my focus began to change around four years ago. Finding flowering plants has become key in searching for pollinators.
The knowledge I gained identifying and learning about plants has been helpful as my interest shifted to the insects that visit and depend upon the various plant parts and life stages: leaves and flowers, pollen and nectar, stems and holes in dead tree trunks. Bees on the wing during their active season(s) go to where the flowers are. Some bees will visit a variety of flowering plants, others are specialists that will only feed on a specific flower genus or species. For butterflies, it helps to be familiar with the host plant(s) where the females lay their eggs. Male behaviors vary, some will hang out around a host plant waiting for a female to emerge from her chrysalis, others will frequent hilltops and engage in dive-bombing competitions with other males while they all wait for a female stop by.
After a disappointing start, I observed and photographed three bee species, one Bromeliad fly (a fly that pollinates flowers because it feeds on nectar), and two birds. I saw one or two butterflies but they seemed to be on a mission to get somewhere and did not stop to feed.
My first sighting on the Museum trails was of a female Agapostemon. The common name for this genus is striped sweat bee. The scopa, pollen-collecting hairs on her hind legs, help to identify her as a female. She is feeding on nectar.
The males of this genus usually have a head and thorax that is brilliant green or blue and an abdomen that are striped yellow and black (or a very dark brown or green). The females are all green, with a few species exceptions in which the females are also bicolored, i.e., with a green head and thorax, and abdominal stripes of alternating colors.
The appearance of striping can be present on an all green female, but it is subtle and hard to see. I have found that white, fine hairs that are present at the borders of abdominal sections (terga) and variations in shades of green that may be related to light conditions, can contribute to a striped appearance.
A Cactus Wren hopping about in dry leaves. It appeared to be searching for something, either insects or nesting material. This species nests in desert trees and cholla cactus. It is vulnerable to earth-bound predators as well as raptors. The entrance to the nest is small, which may prevent some predators from gaining access. The population of the species is in a long decline. The removal of desert plant habitat and development is suspected as a contributing factor.
This female bee is a member of the subgenus Plastandrena. In the photos she is visiting flowers of the species Encelia farinosa, or brittlebush. She is collecting nectar but may also be picking up pollen along the way. She has white hairs on the inner margins (think vertical eyebrows) of each compound eye and white hairs on the pollen-collecting parts of her hind legs. Her primary color is dark brown or black except where there are light hairs and narrow horizontal white stripes on her abdomen. I observed additional bees in this subgenus at the Tohono Chul gardens and in Sabino Canyon during my visit in Tucson.
The Genus Ceratina includes many species. The common name for this genus is Small Carpenter Bees. Small carpenter bees and large carpenter bees share the same taxonomic subfamily, but belong to separate tribes. The bee pictured is shiny and all black except for a couple of white markings at the front of its head between its antennae. The females make their nests in dead wood and hollow stems.
A Costa’s Hummingbird feeding on flower nectar. I do not recall the name of the plant resource but it looks very much like a species of Penstemon. I did not have much success getting acceptable photos of hummingbirds until I starting using my phone’s video capabilities to photograph butterflies. Butterfly identification to species can be impossible if the photographer does obtain both the ventral and dorsal side of the wings. If a butterfly is perched with closed wings, it will open them when it flies away. The same is true if the wings are open: when it flies away the video is recording and can usually capture a ventral view of the wings. The photos below are screenshots from the video I took that day. The best time to take good videos of hummingbirds, butterflies or any other fast moving creature is when there are no other people in the area. Noise and abrupt movement scare them off. This happened a few times at the Museum, but this hummingbird returned to its flowers after a group passed by. Patience!
Complex Copestylum apiciferum is Flower Fly, a member of the Syrphidae family. Flower flies feed on nectar and pollen. Many of them resemble bees which is an evolutionary advantage that is believed to ward off some predators. The larvae often feed on small insects such as aphids, mites and thrips. Adults are pollinators because they pick up and move grains of pollen from one flower to another in the course feeding themselves. The larvae of some syrphid species feed on high volumes of garden and agricultural pests such as mites, aphids and other small insects that suck on the fluids in leaves, while other species eat decaying plant or animal matter. The fly I photographed at the Museum was feeding on brittlebush.
When I find myself wanting to see more, as was the case on this day, I remind myself to not by greedy. Nature does not concern itself with the desires of photographers. Fortunately for us, its power is far greater than any attempts to cage it, and so it endures.
