Welcome everyone! It's a new year and the Spring Equinox just arrived ~ time to start a new thread.

We came from here: The thread "Bee Friends And Other Garden Guests 2018" in Gardening for Butterflies, Birds and Bees forum

Thank you Christine!

Sure thing, Joanna. Looking forward to seeing everyone's pictures!

Haven't seen very many bees yet....
but this looks like a soon-to-be mama squirrel who has been enjoying the bird seed.

Happy Spring 😊 here's a little tropical milkweed bee love from my garden 👍

MIA! Cute bee!

Hi Jason, thank you for sharing your bright sunshiny bee pictures.

Great picture Jason.

A bumble on the powder puff tree

Not sure what kind of bee this one was...on wild milk thistle while hiking.

More bee love in the garden! 😁

Can you find the bee? 😉

I'll trade your bees for these. Just come over and pick them up.

MIA, it wasn't easy to find that bee, it's hiding.

Aww, poor unwanted deer.

Still no photos but I saw a zebra swallowtail today. First of the year. Other STs and skippers are busily going about their business. Appearantlly they have far to much to catch up on after their winter break to take time to pose for me.

I see the bee...really getting into that passiflora.

Not a bee, but a dragonfly, and I think it is eating another dragonfly..

Mason bee thrusting itself inside a still opening Shima Daijin, one of the most amazing pollinator magnets around. Too bad it only flowers once a year and for a couple weeks at very most.

Wow, I didn't know dragonfly eats their own kind. I always thought of them as harmless.
Here is a cute hummingbird resting near my sister's yard. I took it with my iPhone, not so clear. Tiny thing in the middle resting.

SoCalGardenNut said:Wow, I didn't know dragonfly eats their own kind. I always thought of them as harmless.
Here is a cute hummingbird resting near my sister's yard. I took it with my iPhone, not so clear. Tiny thing in the middle resting. O

Dragonfly will take and eat everything they can overpower: smaller dragonflies and especially damselflies are always on the menu. Larvae are even more aggressive and will readily take tadpoles and fish fry.
They are always welcome in my garden and I had not decided to move I would consider making a small pond just so they could breed there.

Dragonflies are bug eaters! The past few days, we've been seeing a group of them in the early evenings, swarming something, I think mosquitoes.

This one seems to show up early in spring. Sometimes I'll see a group of them sitting on the side of a tree.


So does this one called Common Baskettail


I remember this moth was on the apple trees last year too!
Mournful Thyris ~


Anyone know what this is?

Talk about larvae, my husband just turned on our water fountain and he poured some bleach just to kill them. I saw a tiny mosquito on my screen, I have to be careful. No West Nile virus here.

Not our first of the year...but pretty early one.

SoCalGardenNut said:Talk about larvae, my husband just turned on our water fountain and he poured some bleach just to kill them. I saw a tiny mosquito on my screen, I have to be careful. No West Nile virus here.

Bleach has no staying power. It's completely gone in less than 12 hours.
I have been using BTI-based Mosquito Bits in everything I have water that cannot be drained last year. I haven't seen a mosquito larva since. Unfortunately there's an abandoned house down the road that has become tiger mosquito central and our county government is too busy playing real estate speculator to care about it.