Ursula, I'll be going next year so hopefully your friends will love it and I can look forward to it even more! I'll be visiting Neruda's house in Valparaiso, where I board the ship. It's part of the pre-cruise option where we stay a night in Santiago and then they take us to Valparaiso.

Lots of rain here today which is much needed for the plants, but not so good for the hungry pollinators! They'll be happier tomorrow, I'm sure. I'm starting to see a few dragonflies around so the variety is picking up. And I'm still keeping a close eye on the bee house Dad put up for me.

Oh, I thought you were on the same cruise.

Make sure the batteries of your camera are loaded (BTW, we have the european kind of plugs), because Neruda was a 'compulsory' collector. I visited the house pre-digital era, so I have no pictures

I think I mentioned I had remodeled my room and how my stuff got spread throughout the house. And you guys know I had to send off my camera to be repaired and it ended up being replaced. Well, a week or so ago I was taking pictures and my battery ran out. I went looking for my spare and could not, for the life of me find it. I figured I could use extra batteries anyway, so I bought a couple more on Amazon. Two days ago, I found the spare in my purse. I also got an extra SD card. I also have a travel router that doubles as a power bank. And when I was at Target the other day they had a variety of electronics in the dollar (and more than a dollar) section. I saw a power bank for $8 so I bought one for Mom. I just showed her how to charge her phone with it. Oh, and I bought a power converter with four kinds of plugs and USB ports on Amazon. I had Mom use it with the U.S. plug one night to make sure her CPAP machine worked.

We're leaving in about two months for our Belgium and Netherlands trip! I'm so excited to leave the U.S. for the first time! Mom is looking forward to seeing Keukenhof Gardens again. And I will really enjoy making the bulb forum super jealous. You know I'll be taking tons of pictures of everything! Butterflies, bees, birds, flowers, people, buildings, paintings, and maybe even a selfie!

Well, I am not the bulb forum, but already I am super jealous! Sounds like you have two great trips planned

I was inspecting the Virginia Pepper Grass for caterpillars. I didn't find any, but it's still a tad early. I saw one plant that had some chewed leaves, but all I found was this green bug. I feel like you guys have identified this one before, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. Here's the original photo and the cropped one. My camera was having trouble with the green on green.



And speaking of green things, I've been seeing a lot of the native anoles around the house. Specifically, on the back around the lanai. One of them ate a moth I was looking at, but I think the moth was near its end because it let me pick it up and they normally don't do that. This lizard was not the offender, though.

That's a beautiful insect, Melanie!

Thanks, the picture turned out a lot better than I thought. When I looked at the cropped version on here, I was fairly impressed!

There are actually a lot of pollinators showing up lately, but I hurt my back and I've been having trouble leaning and bending. So I have to pick and choose which ones I pursue.

Not much bug activity going on here yet!

More signs of bugs to come...


And I never get tired of seeing the bees.
Pollinating


Flying away

green guy looks like some kinda katydid nymph to me Melanie

for spring
we had a bit of a tease and now today, deep blanket of that whitestuff again

Signs of spring...

Yay!!!

I was coming into the house and noticed a paper wasp nest up on the entryway. There were no wasps, but there was this other large bee looking thing. My battery light was flashing so I snapped as fast as I could. Any idea what this thing is? Does it eat wasps!?

There is a robberfly that mimics a bumble bee. It could be that. Now I must go look it up...

Well, there's more than one mimic but looking at the antenna and mouth I think its probably a robberfly or cuckoo bee called Laphria thoracica...

What do you think?

http://swb.usachoice.net/laphr...

Hmm...I have a bad headache so I had to skim all those words. I'll have to look at the pictures of robber flies I took last year. One thing I noted in the article was about the one species of robber fly that is odd in that it can be found on the ground in grassy areas. That's definitely the kind I saw last year. I just wonder if the one I saw the other day had eaten any paper wasps? I hope so!

wildflowers said:Well, there's more than one mimic but looking at the antenna and mouth I think its probably a robberfly or cuckoo bee called Laphria thoracica...

What do you think?

http://swb.usachoice.net/laphr...

Did you notice that the article says there are several 'undescribed species' in the US? You should all get hunting and become famous!

Mika, I edited your post so the link would work. I'd love to have something named after me!

Speaking of Cuckoo bees, the Florida Wildflower Foundation posted this blog on Facebook this morning: http://floridawildflowerfounda...

Melanie, on the link that I posted, if you scroll down to the fifth image, it shows a Laphria thoracica next to a bumble bee. I think your picture looks like that mimic.

Here's another picture of one http://bugguide.net/node/view/...

p.s. Have you ever tried rubbing a lemon on your headache? I know it sounds crazy and I don't know why it works but it works pretty good.

mellielong said:I was coming into the house and noticed a paper wasp nest up on the entryway. There were no wasps, but there was this other large bee looking thing. My battery light was flashing so I snapped as fast as I could. Any idea what this thing is? Does it eat wasps!?

I thought that looked like an Eastern Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica) to me. They are very common here and the only carpenter bee I will likely see up here, but I think there are others down south by you guys. Kind of hard to tell because the dark areas don't show much detail. I don't think it is that robber fly because I saw them regularly last year and studied my pics quite a bit to try and get them identified to species. That fly's body shape is different from a bee and if you look closely at the legs and "feet" there are differences too. The most obvious difference would be the eyes, antenna, and face... but you can't really see that area well in these pictures. When you see robber fly bee mimics outside you will notice they don't go to flowers or fly around much. They just kind of sit there staring in a menacing way waiting to snatch a meal!

I took a lot of photos yesterday but I'm too tired to post them all right now. But I just went outside and saw this thing way up high on the entryway. I stood on my bench to get a photo but the angle was weird. I thought it was a moth at first, but now I don't think so.



Edit to say - Is this a Green Lacewing? I didn't think they were that big. I see the eggs all the time, but I never seem to see the adults.