Yes, Melanie that is a crane fly there.

Cheryl, thank you and thank you for correctly identifying the long legged fly!! I had to look at my picture again really good to see it is in fact a fly. It has a fly face!

Wow J, so many bee visitors!

Gleni, really good pics of your tiny bees!

Thread wasted wasp



Lynx spider guarding her egg sac

jmorth said:Familiar in and out behavior of Carden Bee >

The wool carder bees are interesting. I have only seen the two introduced species Anthidium manicatum and A. oblongatum so far. If I recall those two species can be differentiated by the color of the "little knobs" where the wings attach to the body.

If you have any fuzzy leaved plants like lamb's ear, pearly everlasting, or prairie sage you can see how they got their common name "wool carder". They scrape at the fuzz on the leaves and gather it up to line their nests.

One on my prairie sage gathering "wool".


Here are pictures from Google of people "carding wool" by scraping it through brushes to align the fibers before spinning.
https://www.google.com/search?...

On a related note regarding them, and the European paper wasps.....and the cabbage whites. It is somewhat disappointing that many of the species I see the most often and in the greatest numbers are the introduced species. I don't think I have ever seen any of the other white butterflies, only cabbage whites. The European paper wasps are the wasps I see the most. The Asian lady beetles are by far the lady beetles I see the most. Japanese beetles are my most abundant beetle of the summers. Then there are the ever present mobs of introduced house sparrows also. Maybe it is because I live fairly close to a major metropolitan area?

Bees did not cooperate today.

But found a spider guarding her nest...





And a Gulf Frit!

GrammaChar, it must be the season for the Lynx spider to lay her eggs, I just found one too.

I think garden spiders are neat!

And so are their egg sacs.

Wow! So many good pictures and conversation on this thread. I feel like I'm learning a LOT! Kudos to everyone for making this such a great thread, and a great forum!

Gleni, your itty bitty bees are so precious!
(I guess you may have to bag blooms for your hybridizing experiments then???)

dirtdorphins said:

No clue what this little itty bitty one was ? some kinda 'hairstreak' type?

it was about the size of a dime, kind of a mauvy, brownish-blueish backside--see just a hint thru the torn off wing-part

I found it
http://www.butterfliesandmoths...

Morgan, I had to laugh while reading your last post--yes, the wildly successful 'invaders' really do breed prolifically, adapt to all kinds of challenges and perform better in the overall competition for resources don't they
Unfortunate that they are so often such nasty things, Japanese beetles, ugh
and where in the world did the roaches and rats come from???
I didn't even know for the longest time that our beloved honeybees were the invaders
and of course, hands down, most of what I see are the ever present mobs of H. sapiens

If there are resources, someone or some thing will show up to exploit them. Nature abhors a vacuum? That's not quite right in this case. Nature rewards more efficient exploitation (use) of resources. That's what's going on with the non-natives.

The nice thing is that the broader ecosystem has been around forever. And it tends to find its own equilibrium. And will continue to long after we're gone. I don't have enough hubris to think otherwise.

wildflowers said:

Lynx spider guarding her egg sac
<--Oh man!! looks like my legs in the wintertime

Nothing wrong with a little extra fur in the winter, Cheryl.

The weather people are prognosticating heavy overcasts and rain the rest of the week. (We do need the rain.) So, this morning I headed out to the backyard to see what the camera and I could rustle up. It was cool. overcast and breezy and only one small bee was on the scene, bouncing around some unidentified flowering object (UFO). Took a bunch of shots, but almost all were less than terrific. Only three seemed possibly worth posting.

Hoping for better luck, I went back out later and stopped by the Robert Fleming Hibiscus to grab a shot of an unusual flower, when I noticed a bug on the flower. Grabbed a couple of shots before the critter ducked out of sight. I'm sure that some of you know what it is.

Moved on to the UFO and found my little bee still hard a work.

A couple of visitors

<Mosquito (?)
< Garden spider...what one?
<White Plume Moth (?)

luvsgrtdanes,

I think that your first bug is a Crane Fly.

Mars, what did I say about complaining about the quality of your photos?

Ronnie, you saw a Plume Moth! I ended up accidentally raising them last year. I thought they were a kind of Blue butterfly based on the plant they were on (Desmodium spp.) and the way the caterpillars look, but they turned out to be a kind of Plume Moth. Also, the way that wasp is posed in your last photo makes it look like it's resting its chin on its knee and is deep in thought.

Would love to see a plume moth!!!!
That little bee-looking creature looks like a Halloween decoration.

Bee in the morning could hardly move...

flies were a little lethargic too -

Back to business by the afternoon...

Bee on Me! >


Flies too...