This handsome fellow visited my porch this weekend (Milwaukee WI USA)--the likes of which I haven't seen before. iNaturalist couldn't pinpoint the species but similar beetles looked possibly unfriendly to trees (borers). Anyone have tips on what it is? #Milwaukee#Wisconsin#beetle#invertebrates#B&W #iNaturalist
Yesterday I witnessed a behaviour I never expected from a solitary bee: she unloaded all its pollen baskets onto a leaf, then tasted it, and soon after flew off, releasing a cloud of pixie dust as she jumped and beat its wings down to take off. As if she had had a change of heart, and the pollen wasn't good enough?
Velvet ants are solitary wasps with hardened exoskeletons and often very powerful and painful venom; they hunt viciously, accumulating paralised prey in burrows where they lay their eggs. The hatching larvae will eat the prey alive.
This one showed herself a great digger. Dug multiple times, a few seconds at a time, as if looking for something. How bees and wasps manage to dig so effectively never ceases to amuse me.
A Ponerine ant, Diacamma geometricum, spotted at Upper Seletar Reservoir Park on 5 Feb 2023. Interesting ripple pattern on its body. This ant species does not have a queen. Instead, some fertile workers breed and produce the colony.
Shots of Brahminy Kites (Haliastur indus) at Kuala Sepetang, Perak, Malaysia on 11 April 2023. Some flew near the riverside restaurant, letting me get these shots of them flying by.
Brahminy Kites resemble the American Bald Eagles, and are common raptors in Malaysia and Singapore.
Can you guess what these interesting looking “fruits” are?
Turns out they aren’t fruits at all. These are galls created by the tree in response to Gall Wasps laying eggs in trees stems. This is a one sided relationship where the tree redirects nutrients to the gall to feed the wasp larva.
Guadalupe River Park, San Jose, California, July 2023
I've delayed long enough -- let's talk about the City Nature Challenge!
It's a global citizen science competition between cities, vying to observe the most species in one weekend. Observations are made via the #iNaturalist app or website.
It starts this weekend, April 26-29, 2024. You have until May 5th to upload all of your observations and try to get them identified.
If your city or region is participating, that's pretty much all you have to do!
A beautiful coastal plant thriving on sand dunes behind the beaches of California. Loved by tiny native bees, who dive into them, only their butts showing when inside.
I've recently discovered iNaturalist, an app and website for cataloguing living beings in the wild. You take a photo, upload it and identify it. It has automatic species/genus recognition/suggestions, life lists, and millions of photos and submissions from other users.
An Anthophora curta napping on a rock by the beach in Isla Vista, in Santa Barbara, California, this past Summer 2023 while visiting UCSB. Its silvery colours and large green eyes are captivating. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/173683325
The other day while I was walking, I saw from the side of my eye, a bird flying mere inches off the pavement. As it got closer, it flew up and landed on a tree next to me. It was a Cooper’s Hawk and after letting me take a few pics, it decided to take off but again, inches above the pavement.
San Jose, California, Oct 2023
My favourite NZ observation on #iNaturalist from the last couple of days is this stable fly photographed at Waihi by helenmacky.
It's a handsome enough fly, and it's a good photo, but what makes it stand out is the gang of at least seven pseudoscorpions all hitching a ride on it.
There's a great new feature on #iNaturalist that lets users decide which common names they'd like displayed across iNat. This overrides the language choice.
In Aotearoa-NZ, there was an awkward tension between users wanting to use #iNaturalistNZ in English, but see the default Māori common names. That's now easy to do.
Tony Iwane at iNat has written a post on the iNat Forum on how to do it. It's a new option in the Content & Display section of your Account Settings.
How it feels to go for a walk if you are into invertebrate photography and are a fan of #iNaturalist. As experienced by nature photographer Julya Hajnoczky.
From National Geographic magazine, paper edition, January 2024. #NatGeo
"Using iNaturalist to learn names in other languages" – what a great initiative, very fitting for the many of us who live in multiple languages simultaneously.
First honeybee of the season on today’s beautiful morning, foraging on nearby crocus and other flowers emerging from long dormant bulbs. This ‘flower’ though wasn’t tasty, only colourful and warmed by the sun.
Every reference photo of the leaf-cutter bee Megachile roeweri at #iNaturalist was unwittingly contributed by me. Thanks to the identifiers for picking up the species; makes my memories of last year's Crete Drosophila neuroscience meeting even sweeter – all are observations from the grounds around the Crete Orthodox Academy at Kolymvari, Crete Island, Greece.