My last public appearance of the season is this Saturday, June 1st!
Join me for a "Pollinator Safari / Walkabout" from 1-3pm at the East 4th Street Community Garden in Kensington, Brooklyn:
"We'll "hunt" for pollinators, and other flower visitors,around the garden. As we try to identify them, we'll learn about the garden’s biodiversity and ecology."
The hope is the information could lead to more protections for the region's natural richness, which is overshadowed by news of drug trafficking & migrant smuggling.
Another unusual insect: Tenthredo baetica (ssp. dominiquei), with only 118 observations world wide, of which 29 for this particular subspecies. It's a wasp – sort of: a sawfly.
The rear limbs are rather large, and I wonder why. For carrying prey?
Wikipedia points out an interesting reversal: in the Tenthredo genus, the larvae eat plants while the adults prey on other insects. Whereas many typical wasps do the opposite: the adults sip nectar but hunt insects to feed their young. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenthredo One wonders then what is this adult doing on a flower, engaging in motion patterns characteristic of foraging on nectar and pollen.
An unusual fly: red-belted hoverfly, Brachypalpoides lentus – a sawfly mimic. The larva is yet to be described. About 20 observations in the whole UK; 172 globally.
From Hyde Park, London (June 2023). Standing right next to Peter Pan's statue.
"The nesting habits of many Osmia species lend themselves to easy cultivation, and a number of Osmia species are commercially propagated in different parts of the world to improve pollination in fruit and nut production. Commercial pollinators include O. lignaria, O. bicornis, O. cornuta, O. cornifrons, O. ribifloris, and O. californica. They are used both as an alternative to and as an augmentation for European honey bees. Mason bees used for orchard and other agricultural applications are all readily attracted to nesting holes – reeds, paper tubes, nesting trays, or drilled blocks of wood; in their dormant season, they can be transported as intact nests (tubes, blocks, etc.) or as loose cocoons."
Go out in a field and walk it and start to pay attention to the ground beneath your feet.
Pay attention to basically every plant until you learn to tell the plants apart.
Take pictures. Use #inaturalist. Be systematic. Don't say "that is grass": what kind of grass? Is it different from this other grass two feet away? How would you tell?
Then after you've done that… repeat the process over the same area. Looking again at what you missed.