Hairy Elephant's Foot, A Surprising Pollinator Magnet

At least until you get to know them well, there are some plants that are hard to get excited about.  Often that's because they don't have fascinating foliage or stunning flowers.  Just because a plant isn't classically beautiful, though, that doesn't mean it isn't greatly loved by pollinators and other insects.

Frankly, Hairy Elephant's Foot (Elephantopus tomentosus) is just such a plant.  It is a hard plant to photograph well.  For the first few months of spring and summer, it consists of a few large, hairy leaves lying flat on the ground, all coming from a central point.  Not glamorous, but definitely easy to photograph.

It's in July that the trouble begins.  The plants start to put up their flowering stalks, which rise for 12-15" above the basal leaves.  There is hardly any foliage on these stems at all.  At the top of each stalk, sudden branches stick out awkwardly, each crowned with a trio of small, bright green, hairy, pointy "leaves".  Nestled within those bracts, the small, lavender flowers open, dainty and subtle.  They open in the morning and close in mid afternoon.

These delicate little blooms wash out readily in a photo, especially in any bright light.   Their dainty airiness just looks sparse on "film", even though it looks charming en masse in real life.

A great plant for shade, Hairy Elephant's Foot grows well there, although it tends to be rather widely scattered.  Unexpectedly last year, I had an experiment in our yard when a neighbor cut down several large trees right near our joint property line and turned what had been almost complete shade into full sun, for 5-6 hours each day.

I expected the shade-loving understory plants that grew in that area to frazzle and die, which many of them did.  The Hairy Elephant's Foot, however, had a banner year, blooming prolifically and attracting an amazing number of pollinators and other insects - 21 different species that I was able to photograph!

So how do I best share the amazing number and diversity of insects that I observed?  A simple list, even illustrated with photos and spiced with bits of (hopefully) interesting information, seems overwhelming and ultimately boring.  So I thought I would talk about a few of the "categories" of insects that I observed:  1) Butterflies and Skippers, 2) Pest Control Squad - Solitary Wasps and Syrphid Flies, 3) A Predator and Prey Duo, 4) Native Bees - Pollinators Extraordinaire, 5) Flies, and 6) Passersby.

Two of the species I photographed using Hairy Elephant's Foot last summer are considered somewhat rare or threatened:  the American Bumble Bee and the Yellow-thighed Thick-leg Fly, a form of syrphid fly.  Both are shown below in their appropriate categories.

BUTTERFLIES AND SKIPPERS:

It's always fun to start with "the pretties" - and I've come to think of butterflies and skippers as "flying flowers", the prettiest group of insects overall.

Butterflies and skippers (and moths) are more than just pretty, though.  Their caterpillars are, according to Dr. Doug Tallamy, one of the primary ways that energy, captured by plants from the sun, moves up the food chain.  EVERYTHING seems to eat caterpillars.  For those of us who are birders, that's especially true of most of the songbirds, 95% of whom raise their young on insects, especially caterpillars.  

So in feeding adult butterflies and skippers, Hairy Elephant's Foot is also helping to keep those adults in our yard, thus supporting the production of caterpillars to feed the upcoming generation of birds and other animals here.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), 8/19/23.   With a variety of host plants in the Magnolia and the Rose families, Eastern Tiger Swallowtails are fairly common across a wide range in North America.  In our yard, I'm guessing that they usually spend their larval time on Tulip Poplars, since we have several extremely large specimens of that majestic tree.  It's often easy to overlook the fact that trees can serve as important host and pollinator plants.

Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus), 8/19/23).  If you don't have pawpaws, you won't have Zebra Swallowtails.  Our neighborhood has a plethora of pawpaws, in great part because deer don't like it and so it spreads with little competition in our deer-challenged yards.  Consequently, we have a plethora of zebra swallowtails.  Most of the time, these ethereal beauties are just floating through, but Hairy Elephant's Foot got them to stick around for a bit.

Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia), 8/20/23.  This was the first time I had seen a Common Buckeye in our yard.  I've started planting Carolina Petunias (Ruellia caroliniensis) as a "matrix plant" and it turns out that they, along with plantains, are host plants for Common Buckeye caterpillars, along with several other species.  So, was it a coincidence to see this one last summer, a year or two after I started adding Carolina Petunias to the yard?  Or the result of adding yet another native plant species to the local plantscape?

Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus), 8/23/23.  If you look very closely, you can also see a little crab spider under the flowers to the right of the skipper.  The caterpillars of Silver-spotted Skippers feed on many plants in the pea family, from Wisteria to Tick-trefoils, where they build a shelter with silk.  According to iNaturalist, it's unusual to see this species visiting yellow flowers;  they prefer blue, pink, red, purple and even white blooms.

Wavy-lined Emerald Moth caterpillar (Synchlora aerata), 8/23/23.  This is the only species of butterfly or skipper (or moth) that I have seen using Hairy Elephant's Foot as a host plant.  These little guys camouflage themselves by sticking pieces of the flower they are eating to their bodies, so this one has purple bits pasted to it, but the same species will have bright yellow bits on one of the Rudbeckias, white bits on Mountain Mint, etc.  Many times, it's hard to see the caterpillar body at all!  The adult moth is a very pretty light emerald green with wavy lines, as suggested by its name.

Other butterflies that I've observed nectarting on Hairy Elephant's Foot include the Sleepy Orange (Abaeis nicippe) and the Cabbage White (Pieris rapae).  Other skippers that I've observed include Horace's Duskywing (Erynnis horatius), Common Checkered Skipper (Burnsius communis), and Zabulon Skipper (Lon zabulon).

PEST CONTROL SQUAD - SOLITARY WASPS:

Wasps seem scary to many of us, but it's literally a few "bad apples" that have spoiled the barrel of public opinion.  Social wasps (paper wasps and yellowjackets) live in colonies, which they defend vigorously.  Solitary wasps, on the other hand, build nests by themselves and are not at all aggressive.  They will only sting if you attempt to catch them in your bare hands.  I have not observed any social wasps using Hairy Elephant's Foot, but I've observed several solitary wasp species doing so.

All wasps raise their larvae (their "babies") on meat, usually on paralyzed insects, sometimes on paralyzed spiders, and (for social wasps) on chewed up insects.  Because they raise their young on other insects and on spiders, wasps are important predators in our yards and gardens, helping to keep the populations of other species in balance and under control.

Solitary wasps paralyze various species of insect or spider and then lay an egg on the paralyzed prey.   Each different species of wasp preys on a different species of insect or spider.  After being paralyzed, the prey animal lives and provides fresh food for the larva when the wasp egg hatches.  Gruesome, to my mind, but very effective.

Double-banded Scoliid Wasp (Scolia bicincta), 8/20/23.  Scoliid wasps are scarab beetle predators, digging for beetle larvae (a.k.a. grubs) in the soil, paralyzing them, and laying an egg on each.  When the egg hatches, the wasp larva eats the beetle larva, then pupates in the host body.   These wasps are excellent grub control!  About 10 years ago, when we lived in south-central Kansas, I did an entire blog post on this species:  http://gaiagarden.blogspot.com/2014/08/double-banded-scoliid-wasp.html

Blue-winged Scoliid Wasp (Scolia dubia), 8/20/23.  Isn't this a cool looking wasp?!  I had never seen this interesting looking species before last summer.  As a scoliid wasp, it is another species that preys on scarab beetle larvae (white grubs), like the Double-banded Scoliid Wasp above.  It is thought that these species may also parasitize Japanese beetle larvae!  

Gold-marked Thread-waisted Wasp (Eremnophila aureonotata), 8/21-3/23.  I've always wondered how anything - food, blood, etc. - gets through that narrow waist!  Anyway, this interesting looking solitary wasp preys on larger moth larvae, like those of the sphinx moths and owlet & cutworm moths, for food for its larvae.

Fraternal Potter Wasp (Eumenes fraternus), 8/20/23.  There's a reason this little wasp is called a "potter wasp" - the female builds a gorgeous little mud pot in which she stashes the caterpillars that she paralyzes for her young to eat.  She then lays an egg and closes the pot, also with mud, making a perfect little nursery.

Weevil Wasp (Cerceris halone), 8/23/23.  Another solitary wasp, this wasp provisions the cells in her nursery burrows with paralyzed weevils from the genus Curculio.

A PREDATOR AND PREY DUO:

There are bees known as "cuckoo bees" that parasitize the nests of other bees.  Often this happens by the cuckoo bee following the female of its host species back to her nest.  When the host female departs for another load of pollen and nectar to provision her latest brood cell, the female cuckoo bee quickly ducks in and lays an egg.  Generally, when the egg of the cuckoo bee hatches, it either attacks and kills the larva of the host bee, or it hatches first and eats the egg of the host bee before it hatches.  Either way, the cuckoo bee larva then eats the provisions that the mother host bee stored for her own offspring, pupates, and emerges the following year in place of the young of the host bee.

The relationship between the host bee and the cuckoo bee is often very specific, with each cuckoo bee parasitizing only a single species.

How does the cuckoo bee find the host bee?  Well, she hangs out at the same "bar", so to speak.  The life cycles of the host bee and the cuckoo bee are perfectly timed to overlap, and both will be found nectaring at the same flowers.  I found such a pair using the blooms of Hairy Elephant's Foot in our yard:  the Two-spotted Longhorn Bee (host) and the Lunate Longhorn-cuckoo Bee (parasite).

Two-spotted Longhorn Bee (Melissodes bimaculatus), 8/20/23 - host bee.  This almost pure black bee gets its name from the two squarish white spots on either side of its abdomen.  Unfortunately, you can't see those field marks in this photo.

Lunate Longhorn-cuckoo Bee (Triepeolus lunatus), 8/20/23 - cuckoo bee (parasite).

NATIVE BEES - POLLINATORS EXTRAORDINAIRE:

More people are understanding the importance of our native bees for pollination.  The beloved Honey Bee is actually a European import, brought here by colonists who unsurprisingly wanted the honey it produced, as well as its pollination services.  But, for all we hear about honey bees pollinating plants, they are not as efficient at the job as many of our native bees are.

Before the European colonists arrived, there was no problem with pollination in North America.  This continent has almost 4000 species of native bees, often with life cycles exquisitely timed to coincide with those of the plant they evolved to partner with.  Some of these native bees are generalist pollinators, others are specialists who only pollinate one single species, still others pollinate the flowers of just a few plants.

I have not seen honey bees use Hairy Elephant's Foot, although that certainly doesn't mean they don't.  The bees I've seen pollinating this plant all fall under the heading of generalist native bees.  I'll start with two different bumble bee species.....

American Bumble Bee (Bombus pensylvanicus), 8/23/23.  According to iNaturalist, this species used to be one of the most common types of bumble bee, especially in the south, but 90% of its population has been lost in the last 20 years.  It is now considered threatened throughout much of its range.

Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens), 8/20/23.  As its name implies, this is the bumble bee that I see most commonly in our yard.

Eastern Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica), 8/20/23.  What looks like a bumble bee but has a smooth abdomen?  A carpenter bee.  Great pollinators, they do NOT eat wood...although they do tunnel into it to make their solitary nests.  The females will reuse existing nest tunnels, only taking the time and energy to excavate new tunnels when absolutely necessary.

Pure Green Sweat Bee (Augochlora pura), 8/20/23.  This beautiful little bee nests in rotting logs, a habitat that we have been restoring on our property.  The fertilized females also overwinter underneath rotting logs, waiting until it's time for them to emerge in the spring.

FLIES:

Many flies act as pollinators, although they are not as well known in that role as bees are.  The first species I share here is one of the relatively rare species I've seen on Hairy Elephant's Foot.

Yellow-thighed Thick-leg Fly (Tropidia albistylum), 8/23/23.  This is a relatively rare species of syrphid fly with a very unattractive common name.  As of this writing, there are only 212 observations of this species in iNaturalist, as opposed to 25,000-50,000 observations of two more common syrphid fly species that I've seen in our yard.

Greenbottle Fly (Lucilia sp.), 8/20/23.  This genus of flies (I can't identify this photo below that level) are scavengers, generally speaking.

There were at least 2 other species of flies that I photographed on Hairy Elephant's Foot, but I was unable to identify either of them further.

PASSERSBY:

Of course, in watching any plant or area, there will be some insects that just happen to perch for a while.  Rounding out this line-up of Hairy Elephant's Foot insect fans are a couple of those more incidental visitors....

Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis), 8/22/23.  This is a dimorphic species, meaning that the male and female look dissimilar.  This individual is a female;  it is the male that has the blue coloration for which the species is named.  Dragonflies are fierce predators of smaller insects.  I'm always hoping the ones I see are living up to their colloquial name of "mosquito hawks".

Eastern Tailed Blue butterflies (Cupido comyntas)  - and a Midge (7/30/23).   Hairy Elephant's Foot can even be used for a bit of canoodling, with or without a voyeuristic midge looking on.

In conclusion, Hairy Elephant's Foot is not a classically "beautiful" plant, but it sure packs a powerful punch for wildlife.  Including insects I've seen but not photographed, I've noticed over 30 different species using this plant - and the deer don't bother it at all.  If you can find a corner somewhere, I highly recommend it.  I've never seen Hairy Elephant's Foot "in the trade", but personal experience tells me that it transplants well.  Mine just showed up on their own.  Keep your eyes peeled or ask if anyone you know has some they'd be willing to share.  You'll be glad you did.  

A Recent Cast of Characters in My Gardens: Pollinators and Predators

With the initiation of several days of rain, it seems like a good time to share a few garden photos from the plethora I've taken over the last few weeks.  Since I'm obsessed with pollinators and other wildlife, that's what I'll generally be showing you!

Gaillardia (Gaillardia pulchella) brings in a lot of insect activity.  I have several pots of gaillardia on our back patio, as well as a few plants along the street by our mailbox.  Not surprisingly, most of my photos are from the plants I see most often - the ones near my back door.

This is a lousy photo, but I wanted to share the single bumble bee (Bombus sp.) I've seen in my gardens so far this summer.  Gaillardia is the ONLY flower I've seen her on so far.

A female monarch (Danaus plexippus) finally visited the yard for several days last week and she left several eggs behind.  Here's she's ovipositing on a swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) I planted a couple months ago.  I'm a "survival of the fittest" biologist, so I don't collect the eggs and raise the caterpillars inside;  I'm waiting to see if I see any caterpillars - this photo was taken on the 28th, so there should be a couple tiny babies out there munching away, but I haven't gone looking yet.  (Update:  my grandson and I went out in the rain this afternoon and found at least 3 tiny new monarch caterpillars!  Yeah!)

Ms. Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) here isn't a pollinator, but I love welcoming her and her relatives into the yard.  Every mosquito this mosquito hawk eats is a mosquito that doesn't bite me! Aren't her eyes particularly gorgeous?  The body of the male blue dasher is a beautiful powdery blue, but I've been seeing almost exclusively females lately.

This green treefrog (Hyla cinerea) seems to have decided that the outside corner of our gutter near the bright lights of the kitchen window makes a perfect home.  Over the past week, I've been seeing her (him?) frequently within just a few inches of this location.   Note:  nothing like a closeup photo to let you know the house badly needs a power washing!

Out front, the newly planted sweet pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia) has excited a lot of pollinator interest.  I shared the potter wasp and the 4 spotted scarab hunter wasp I've seen nectaring here in my recent post;  this is a carpenter-mimic leaf-cutter bee (Megachile xylocopoides) who also has seemed to enjoy the blooms. 

The deep velvet black of this bee's body and the iridescent blue-black of its wings are just stunning.  I wonder if this is the species that has been harvesting circles of dogwood leaves to make their nest cells waterproof?

Another little green treefrog was tucked away inside a Flyr's nemesis (Brickellia cordifolia), hoping against hope that I didn't actually see him as I looked around.  I let him pretend that I hadn't noticed him.....

With the spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata) beginning to bloom, I'm starting to see a little more activity in that section of the garden, including this small green anole (Anolis carolinensis).  I'm still not seeing many insects attracted to the spotted beebalm blossoms, but I did see a hummingbird feeding - even though I didn't have my camera with me so I could visually share with you.

Back to the anole for a moment, I've been seeing many tiny little green anoles for the last several weeks, which just makes me smile.  Obviously it's been a good year for anole love!

Another recent dragonfly visitor was the great blue skimmer (Libellula vibrans), who perched on top of the poles in our tomato pots for a while - and was lucky enough (and good enough) to capture a passing moth shortly after I took the top photo.  Those big, black-spotted blue eyes aren't just for show!

Out front, enjoying the turkey tangle fogfruit (Phyla nodiflora), there's been the phaon crescent (Phyciodes phaon), nectaring - and possibly laying eggs, since fogfruit is their larval plant.  Note:  I don't know if this individual is a male or female.

The fogfruit has also attracted many other insects, including a female blue dasher dragonfly, a carpenter-mimic leaf-cutter bee, several  different species of wasps, bees, and flies.  In fact, the fogfruit is active enough that it's probably worth a post just by itself.  I just wish it looked a little more "gardeny"....

Anoles have been out in the front gardens as well as in the back.  Here was one haunting a summer phlox (Phlox paniculata) blossom.  Sometimes I wonder if I don't see huge numbers of pollinators because I DO see lots and lots of predators around the blooms - and I'm sure it's not a coincidence that they are hanging out there!

Speaking of predators, whether nymphs (like this one) or adults, I'm seeing quite a few milkweed assassin bugs (Zelus longipes) this summer.  I thought they were so-named because they were part of the milkweed community, but recent reading suggests their name comes from their coloration.  I've certainly seen them on many, many plants, not just on milkweed.

The clustered mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) in the back yard has brought in quite a few unusual (for my garden) pollinators.  Besides several wasp species, there is this grapeleaf skeletonizer moth (Harrisina americana) which has both a common name and a color pattern that make it a perfect Halloween animal.

Believe it or not, this small, colorful, Halloween themed moth, also nectaring on the mountain mint, is from the a group of moths known as bird dropping moths.  Yes, that's an actual common name for moths in the subfamily Acontiinae .  This moth goes by the hard-to-remember name of black-dotted spragueia moth (Spragueia onagrus)  and is an animal I've never seen before in my life.  Kudos to the helpful folks at BugGuide.net for helping me identify this one!

Lacewing larvae, looking for all the world like prehistoric monsters or like some less glittery version of Tamatoa, the Crab, on Moana, are hard to see unless you look closely, but they are great allies in garden pest control.  This photo is blurry (the entire "mound" is barely 1/4" across and I wasn't using a tripod) but, if you look carefully, you can see the huge jaws under the front edge as well as a wing from one of its dinners right above the jaws.

In all, this lineup of characters from my garden highlights 6 garden predators (green anole, green treefrog, milkweed assassin bug, lacewing larva, blue dasher dragonfly, great blue skimmer dragonfly) and 6 pollinators (monarch, bumblebee, carpenter-mimic  leaf-cutter bee, phaon crescent butterfly, grapevine skeletonizer moth, and black-spotted spragueia moth).  During the 10 days that I photographed these animals, I saw many other animals, too.  Some, like the 5 species of wasps that I talked about in my last post, I've shared with you.  Others, like bluebirds, cardinals, bluejays, gray squirrels, chickadees, tufted titmice, house finch, mockingbirds, red-shouldered hawk, brown skinks, southern toads, and Eastern box turtle, I haven't shared.

How can anyone be happy with a statically "pretty" landscape, when a garden filled with wildlife changes minute by minute?!  I love the surprise of going out into my yard and meeting a new insect neighbor.  I love the pleasure of looking at a flower cluster and realizing that I'm looking into the eyes of a little lizard or camouflaged frog.  Each new animal I see adds a layer of richness to the world around me that delights and soothes me.  What an honor to be sharing my yard and gardens with all these other forms of life here on Earth.

A Buzz in the Meadow

I just finished reading A Buzz in the Meadow, Dave Goulson's latest book.  (He wrote A Sting in the Tale several years ago, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading last December.)  Goulson is a biology professor in England who has done some excellent research on bumblebees;  he is the founder of the Bumble Conservation Trust.  I was really looking forward to reading this book, especially as it was about the run down French farm Goulson purchased about a dozen years ago and his efforts to restore it to decent biological/ecological health. That resonated with my efforts to restore decent biodiversity on our 10 acres in Kansas, so I was curious to see what sorts of results a "professional" had had with the process.

At first I was a little disappointed.  His descriptions of the early years at the farm were fine, but they didn't spark me. In his introduction, he'd described how he'd organized the book into 3 sections, though, so I kept reading.

Things picked up as I read a bit further - some of the natural history relationships that he describes almost seem like the stuff of science fiction or legend, but they are processes that occur every day in the normal course of events.  Do hairstreak butterflies in Kansas have the same weird move, just prior to landing, that hairstreaks in Europe do?

This is the gray hairstreak, feeding on aromatic aster, in my fall garden a couple years ago.  I'll be watching hairstreaks as they land to feed now.

How long do OUR dragonflies stay coupled during the summertime - as long as European dragonflies do?  If so, why have I never noticed that before?

Can U.S. newspapers REALLY affect sexual development in European bugs?

WHY would some flowers evolve to be warmer than their surroundings?  (Remind me to check magnolia blooms in early spring, would you?!)

Apparently in Europe, treating a flower filled grassland with chemical fertilizer (even just for a year or two) will cause the flowers to disappear as the grasses go absolutely berserk and choke the forbs out.  Does the same thing happen in the American prairie???

There are also a few species of wildflowers in Europe that act as partial parasites on nearby grasses, so meadows with those flowers in them tend to have more species diversity as the grasses get kept "in their place" more effectively.  Does that happen in the prairie???

As you can tell, there were many things to think about as I read further into this book.

Then I got to the 3rd section. 

If I'd had one disappointment in A Sting in the Tale, Goulson's earlier book, it was that Goulson didn't seem too hot and bothered about neonicotinoid pesticides and their effect on bees.  I don't remember him saying much at all about colony collapse disorder.  Since he was a bumblebee researcher, this seemed like a huge omission.

Apparently a lot of other people were wanting him to weigh in on the subject, too, so he did what any REAL scientist would do: he decided to study the issue himself.   Then he wrote about what he learned in Chapter 13:  "The Disappearing Bees". This chapter gives a brief history of the issues, then goes into the research that he did on the topic of neonicotinoids' effects on bumblebees, what it revealed, and what happened after that research was published.

It's eye-opening.  If you use pesticides in your yard or garden, if you counsel people about whether they should use pesticides - I highly recommend that you read this chapter, even if you read nothing else in this book. I found my jaw dropping at times.

(Obviously I must be developing facial tics, after re-reading that last paragraph!)

Finishing up the book, the final chapter was so interesting that I read it out loud to my husband.   Talk about historical perspective! Goulson even worked the "hobbit people" in there!

Hobbit people or not, the book had important and interesting things to share.  Reading it left me feeling that I could make a real difference anywhere I lived by creating a small refuge of biodiversity in my yard and garden.  Each of us will change the world, at least a little bit.  I like to think I'll leave the world a little bit richer for my having passed through it.....

"A Sting in the Tale" by Dave Goulson

When I was 9 or 10, my Uncle Ted came to the States after a couple years in Africa, where he had served with the Peace Corps.  He stayed with us for a while as he searched for and found a teaching job, then was able to find his own home (and eventually a wife, Maja!)  Uncle Ted brought with him a VW bug, tales of crashing his motorcycle into a lion basking on the road, and a book that he thought I'd enjoy reading, My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell.

While I was glad when Uncle Ted found his own place (since he'd been given MY bedroom during his sojourn with us, while I had to bunk with my 2 younger brothers), I was always glad that he'd stayed with us.  I was especially glad that he'd shared My Family and Other Animals with me. I loved that book and I've reread it multiple times.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with this magical story, it's the autobiographical tale - told from an adult's perspective - of a young English boy's years living with his mother and siblings on the Greek island of Corfu.  As a boy in this magical place, Durrell spent most of his days observing and collecting animals, bringing many of them home (alive) so that he could study them closely and learn their habits.  Not surprisingly, his family didn't share his love of animals.  They particularly disliked sharing their home with his menagerie and many humorous incidents resulted.  The book ends up as an engrossing combination of slapstick humor and natural history information.  Being the grasshopper-catching, toad-racing kid that I was, I loved it...and I learned an incredible amount about a wide variety of animals from reading it.

For several years afterward, I aspired to be a young, female, Gerald Durrell, even going so far as to make a series of "aquariums" out of cardboard milk cartons so that I could bring home unfortunate animals from the beach, then try to keep them alive in my bedroom.  My success ratio was abysmal, but my enthusiasm for animals and the environment never waned.

There's still a strong streak of that "young, female, Gerald Durrell" in me, so you'll understand how special I think a recently published book is when I say that it reminds me of My Family and Other Animals.

The book I'm referring to is Dave Goulson's A Sting in the Tale, which was published in 2013.  However, Dave Goulson isn't just a kid who loved animals, he is now a professor of biological and environmental sciences at the University of Sussex...and he founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in 2006.  This book is that wonderful mix of natural history and human saga that I came to love in Durrell's work, only this time the natural history tales revolve primarily around bumblebees and the human characters are apt to be graduate students or Dr. Goulson himself.

The prologue of A Sting in the Tale briefly describes Goulson's childhood, including some almost grisly (but still humorous) tales of learning about animals the hard way.  The body of the book covers a wide-ranging array of tales such as why (and how) Britain's population of short-haired bumblebees came to be re-established by way of New Zealand, why biologists can sometimes be found snipping toes off bumblebees, and how bumblebees find their way home to the right nest.

Bumblebees are important native pollinators.  They are often some of the earliest insects flying to pollinate spring flowers;  they can be among the latest insects pollinating in the fall as well.  There are species of plants - some of them quite important in our food supply - that rely heavily on the services of bumblebees for pollination, so the fact that bumblebees aren't doing well overall is important to know.  Goulson and his students have been doing much of the recent research learning about bumblebees and trying to determine what's been messing with their life cycles and causing their populations to decline so precipitously.

For any person interested in native pollinators or just interested in how the natural world works, the stories and discoveries in this book are fascinating.  For gardeners, they are likely to be especially intriguing.  I highly recommend reading this book - you'll never look at those fat, hairy, black and yellow bumblers quite the same way again!

P.S.  I would especially like to thank my friend Joan for recommending this book to me...and for almost forcing it onto me!  She was exactly right - it's excellent and I'm so glad that I didn't miss it.

Glimpses Into Other Lives....

It's such a busy time of year outside right now.  Oh, not busy for me, the gardener who doesn't like heat, but busy for insects and flowers and birds and so many other living things.  I do a walkabout and come back with dozens of photos of interesting glimpses I've been given into other lives.

Of course, much of the time I'm not sure what I've really seen, so I have to research the animal or plant and try to find out.  Sometimes I'm successful...and sometimes I'm not.  Sometimes what I learn seems worth a share...and sometimes not.

Here are a few glimpses of other lives that I've been privileged to observe recently....

Do you ever wonder where other animals sleep?  No safe bed to curl up into....  No obvious shelter from the elements....  No protection from the many, many predators sharing the world with you, night as well as day....  Well, the evening before last, I looked out my kitchen window and saw a dark shape among the leaves of our green ash tree.  Binoculars showed me a rather tattered black swallowtail butterfly clinging to a leaf about 15 feet above the ground.  It seemed rather exposed from my view in the kitchen, but when I grabbed my camera and went outside to take a photo, I had a hard time getting a clear shot.

Maybe it wasn't so exposed a location after all!

Then yesterday morning, about 9:30 a.m., I started out on a walkabout with the boys.  As I went through the back yard, movement fluttering out of the green ash caught my eye.  A large, black swallowtail came out of the tree, to rest on one of my rose bushes.  I quickly caught the image with my camera.

A well worn, female eastern tiger swallowtail, Papilio glaucus, black form, is what my research told me.  To paraphrase the meme currently going around, she looks like she's lived a full life and will slide sideways, screaming "Ya-hooooo!" into her grave!

When I pulled up the images of the sleeping butterfly from the evening before, it was also a female, black form, eastern tiger swallowtail.  Is this one I saw yesterday morning the same one I saw sleeping in that green ash the night before?  Probably.  We don't have that many swallowtails around, let alone worn out, black form, female, eastern tiger swallowtails.  Interestingly, as I look outside right now - about the same time I left on my walk yesterday morning - I notice that the spot she chose to rest in overnight is illuminated brightly by the rising sun.  It would have warmed her perfectly to start her day's duties of eating and reproducing.  Did she pick that spot "consciously" so that she would get a good start the next day, or was it just serendipity that she came to rest there?  One of life's tiny mysteries to which I, at least, will probably never know the answer.

Speaking of never knowing, it's common at this time of year to see funnel webs in the grass, but it's uncommon to see the spiders that build and live in them.  Not being the sort to tear a web apart to see who made it and lives in it, I looked for years without being granted the gift of seeing a funnel web spider.  Then, several years ago, my stubbornness paid off and I started catching glimpses of spiders darting back into their vortical holes.  Once or twice, I was cautious enough to even get a photo or two before caution overcame the spider's curiosity and it retreated back into safety.

This year I have several funnel webs in amongst my flower blooms, a foot or two above the ground.  They're not particularly beautiful, binding the swaying blossoms and leaves together while catching debris in their sticky matrix of silk, but I leave them be as part of the (literal) web of life keeping its precarious balance in my gardens.

Two mornings ago, I was rewarded for my forbearance with a grand appearance by one of my funnel web spiders, standing guard at the entrance to its home while displaying its daily catch, neating bound in front of it.

I can't tell what poor, hapless creature served as breakfast, but I appreciate finally getting to see (and share) in this facet of garden life.

My final share in this post, to keep it from getting too long, is both a simple joy and a non-mystery with a mysterious component.  On my walkabout yesterday morning, I found that the dotted gayfeather, Liatris punctata, have started to bloom out back. 

While capturing their luminescent purple spikes, I came across this beautiful bumblebee, busily gorging on fresh nectar or pollen.

I don't recall having seen, around here, a bumblebee with so much rust on it before.  I carefully looked through the bumblebee species on Bugguide.net, but found nothing that matched both the rusty hair on the terminal abdominal segments, as well as the patches of rust on the thorax, so I put in an ID request there.   Since I did see an American bumblebee, Bombus pennsylvanicus, on their site with the rusty hair on the terminal abdominal segments (but not on the thorax), and that species is common here, I'm suspecting they'll just tell me it's a different color morph of American bumblebee, but maybe not.  Now I anxiously await their verdict!

So many thousands of other creatures, busily living their lives while sharing our small acreage....  Actually, I guess, I'm phrasing that incorrectly.  In the overall scheme of life on Earth, it's not "our" acreage.  I should be saying that we are sharing the world with all these other creatures, while we have the privilege of caring for the small acreage that we and they, both, live on...for now. 

And I truly feel privileged for getting this opportunity.