Showing posts with label insects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insects. Show all posts

Gloria's Insects: Unscheduled flyover in the garden last week...

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Photo copyright Gloria Z. Nagler

(My best guess/i.d.: Bee on blossom is a Long-horned Bee -- I mean, look at her antennae! -- with a green eye to boot! Related to the Honeybees, but the Long-horns nest in the ground.

The bee in flight may be a Western Leafcutter Bee, a common summer pollinator in our region. The green-eyed males are known to guard flowers in "their" territory -- like this one is doing now -- and can be aggressive towards other bees. The females, like the Long-Horned Bees, nest in the ground.)

--Gloria Z. Nagler



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Garden Guy: Butterflies in Your Garden

Saturday, July 15, 2023

Butterfly Garden at Woodland Park Zoo
Photo courtesy WoodlandParkZoo.org
By Bruce Bennett

As a volunteer at the Woodland Park Zoo, I received word about the 2023 June reopening of Molbak’s Butterfly Garden after a two-year pandemic-related closure. 

But, “Why?” you may well ask, “would a zoo dedicate precious urban space to an exhibit which is open for only four months of the year? “ 

It’s because the twenty or so varieties butterflies who call western Washington home are choosy insects. Any gardener can have aphids, but Red Admirals, Painted Ladies and Tiger Swallowtails and all their kin insist upon certain environmental niceties, such as sunshine, shelter from wind and protection from the winter wet.

The chances of area readers/gardeners having such spaces in their yards are pretty good and would allow the ephemeral spots of color to float through neighborhood yards and display like so many flowers-on-the-breeze. The zoo also provides the space because butterflies as well as other pollinators are becoming even more endangered. And, for the zoo, the survival and preservation of ‘endangered species’ is what it’s all about.

I highlight butterflies in this column because they tend to be the most visually interesting and mind- stickering of our much-needed plant pollinators. If you have read a summer newspaper, magazine or blog in the past several years, you already know how important pollinators are to the overall health of the human ecosystem and how they help to keep us thriving and eating. 

If you want to read more information on the subject, simply type ‘butterflies’ or ‘pollinators’ in your Internet browser-of-choice. The care and promotion of butterflies would also make an excellent science research report for any kiddo in the house who attends school or is homeschooled.

Photo courtesy WoodlandParkZoo.org
You can increase your butterfly viewing opportunities by creating garden spaces which are attractive to them. 

To butterflies, the plants in the garden are more important than the design of the garden. They need flowers for nectar throughout the short season of their lives. Luckily, many annuals, perennials, shrub and tree flowers are great nectar producers throughout the year. 

While native plants can play an important role as host plants for butterfly caterpillars, most adult butterflies have more cosmopolitan tastes and are able to get their fill on the more exotic flowers that you grow in your landscapes. This one fact makes it much easier edit the design of your garden and still feel good about providing for the many pollinators who are under siege in our urban environments.

Butterflies seem to be especially attracted to gardens boasting generous patches of a given nectar flower. If you happen to plant the robust Jupiter's-Beard (Centranthus), don't settle for one or two plants. A drift of three to seven plants will provide an excellent meal for your colorful visitors and, at the same time, provide you with a garden color spot surrounded by the aerobatics of butterflies, moths and hummingbirds. It’s a value-added strategy, without any extra cost, for the landscape designer within you.

Tiger swallowtail
Photo courtesy WoodlandParkZoo.org
I am fairly successful at having flowers blooming in the yard for twelve months a year. 

This planning process certainly helps to visually enhance my window views and increases the smorgasbord menus that pollinators can enjoy, some more than others (think about our resident hummingbirds). 

Plants such as mahonia, azaleas, grape hyacinths, lilacs and pinks can start the menu in late-winter through mid-spring. 

Achilleas, asclepias, germander, perennial phlox and Jupiter’s Beard provide color and nectar in July and August. 

For September and October, abelia, caryopteris, purple asters, sneezeweed and coreopsis will help to fill-out the pollinator menu. The list of nectar-producing plants is long and varied and will change from one part of the state to another. 

Talk to volunteers at a local Master Gardener Clinic. Visit your local library and/or surf the Internet for specific information on your part of the world. To be a good gardener, you need to also be a good researcher!

Start a pollinator garden area in a location that gets at least six-hours of sunlight. Butterflies need the sun's warmth and most plants that attract butterflies grow best in full sun. Determine how much space you have and any items, other than plants, that you'd like to include. 

Consider adding a large flat rock or two. Butterflies enjoy basking on them, often with their wings spread out to catch more rays. Also allow room for a pot saucer filled with mud or moist sand as a water source to encourage butterflies to linger longer. Create this manufactured puddle in a low-profile container with to attract swallowtails and other butterflies that enjoy drinking at mud puddles. (They do so to obtain needed salts in their diet.) 

A sprinkling of table salt and the addition of some manure each year will increase the puddle's appeal, for pets and kiddos if not butterflies. After their first year, these pollinator gardens can become low-maintenance areas of the landscape.

Photo courtesy MissouriBotanicalGarden.org
After two years of a pandemic-related hiatus, the Woodland Park Zoo’s Molbak’s Butterfly Garden opened its doors with 300+ butterflies to welcome you. 

The garden will be open during regular zoo hours through the first week of September. 

Even after the Butterfly House closes for the season, the adjacent Microsoft Pollinator Garden is open year-round. On display will be more pollinator-friendly plants than would be useful for just butterflies (the Voodoo Lily, Dracunculus vulgaris, a fly attractor, immediately comes to mind. 

Strange? Well, yes and, yet, flies are pollinators). You may even find me wandering the two gardens and have the chance to ask your home gardening questions.

With proper planning, good plant selection and minimal maintenance, Western Washington gardeners can create a garden area that will not only attract butterflies and help to preserve these important and beautiful insects that are so vital to our ecosystem, but, also provide we homeowners with many garden-produced smiles throughout the year and I’m all for that. 

Happy Gardening all!

For More Information:

  • Burns, Deborah, ed. Attracting Native Pollinators, North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2011.
  • Fleming-Hayes, Rhonda. Pollinator Friendly Gardening: Gardening for Bees, Butterflies, and Other Pollinators, McGregor, MN: Voyager Press, 2016.
  • Johnson, Lorraine and Colla, Sheila. A Northern Gardener's Guide to Native Plants and Pollinators, Washington, DC: Island Press, 2023.
  • Kruckeberg, Arthur and Chalker-Scott, Linda, Gardening With Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2019.
  • Lewis, Alcinda. Butterfly Gardens, Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, 2001.

Contributing garden columnist, Bruce Bennett, is a Washington State University Master Gardener, lecturer and Seattle-area garden designer. 

If you have questions concerning this article, have a gardening question or two to ask concerning your landscape or want to suggest a topic for a future column, contact Bruce at gardenguy4u@gmail.com or visit the Master Gardener Clinic at the Lake Forest Park Town Center in July and August.

Previous Garden Guy columns can be accessed HERE


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Eager Bee

Sunday, July 9, 2023

Photo by Wayne Pridemore

 Let's go, let's go, it's so sunny;
we need to rush, make some honey.
 
Opening lines of Eager Bee poem 
in Poetry Soup by Terry Miller


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Gloria's Insects: Dressed to the Nines

Monday, June 26, 2023

Photo copyright Gloria Z. Nagler


Dressed to the nines, right?

Wouldn't bet the farm on my i.d., but certainly it's a swallowtail, and the Oregon Swallowtail looks closest to these untrained eyes. 

They're Pacific Northwest butterflies, and the official insect of Oregon. Now I gotta see if Washington has one of those:) 

I adore everything about her, and especially her red and blue splashes at the edges of her wings.

--Gloria Z. Nagler


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Gloria's Insects: Dragonfly husk

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Photo copyright Gloria Z. Nagler

Always stuff to learn, right? 

Spotted this in wetlands in New Orleans. The dragonfly had already reached adulthood when s/he emerged from this larval casing. Process is called eclosion.

Learned this and more from Dragonflies and Damselflies, by Dennis Paulson. Useful book if you're photographing or even just observing dragonflies.

--Gloria Z. Nagler


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Gloria's Insects: Hi, Photog! Great to see you in our garden again!

Friday, May 26, 2023

Photo copyright Gloria Z. Nagler

Unique among my bee pix, this bee is looking into my lens!

I’m no entomologist, but I’m guessing this is a Mason Bee — smaller than a Honeybee. They often visit over 50 flowers per trip! Busy bee, indeed:)

--Gloria Z. Nagler



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Gloria's Insects: Tried out my new 2:1 macro lens on this cooperative housefly...

Monday, April 24, 2023

Photo copyright Gloria Z. Nagler
 
the lens even works handheld; which is great, coz I don't even know where my tripod is, anymore:)

--Gloria Z. Nagler


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The first bumblebee of spring

Friday, April 14, 2023

Photo by Wayne Pridemore

The first sighting this spring of a bumblebee.


It has been said that because of its body shape and the small size of its wings the bumblebee is an aerodynamic impossibility, but it flies anyway because it has never been told that it can't !.

--Robert Schuller



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Taproot Theatre adds honey tasting from Shoreline bees to its latest production

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

The latest production from Taproot Theatre in north Seattle is As It is in Heaven.

“’Tis a gift to be simple,” sing the Shakers of Pleasant Hill, the setting of Arlene Hutton’s As It is in Heaven, a regional premiere at Taproot Theatre. 

But as the young women in the community claim new spiritual gifts, Sister Hannah and the other elders must judge whether these gifts are real or rebellion. Set during America’s surge of Utopian communities, the play wrestles with belief and doubt in a swiftly changing world.

Based on true events, the play asks questions about faith and tradition and what we do when someone’s encounter with the divine is beyond our own understanding. Directed by Marianne Savell, the show opens on March 24, 2023 and runs through April 22, 2023.

The Shakers brought Italian bees to the U.S. in the 19th century, and you can experience the simple pleasure of honey from Rainy Day Bees on April 7, 2023 at 6:30pm at this exclusive add-on event for patrons who have tickets to Taproot Theatre’s As It is in Heaven that evening.

For only $10, join Peter Nolte of Rainy Day Bees in Shoreline to taste the unique flavors of 5 honeys produced by small beekeepers. You’ll explore the flavors from different flowers and regions while learning about beekeeping and threats to bee health.

Tickets are available online at taproottheatre.org, by phone at 206-781-9707 (Tue-Sat, noon-5:00pm), or in person at 204 N 85th St. Ticket prices for As It is in Heaven range from $25-56 with discounts available for students, seniors, active military, 25 and Under and TeenTix members. Add-on tickets for the honey tasting are $10.

Rainy Day Bees
ABOUT RAINY DAY BEES

Peter and Amy Beth Nolte produce local honey in backyards throughout the Seattle area for the last 12 years through Rainy Day Bees' Hive Hosting service. 

They love sharing the unique flavors of our local honeys. If you're in the area and want to learn more about bees (and even get inside a hive), they also host hive tours at their home in Shoreline for individuals and corporate team building events! 

Learn more: rainydaybees.com or https://www.facebook.com/RainyDayBees

The production runs March 22 – April 22, 2023 
  • Wed/Thur, 7:30pm 
  • Fri/Sat, 8:00pm 
  • Sat matinee, 2:00pm
Taproot Theatre Company’s Jewell Mainstage Theatre, in Greenwood at 204 N 85th St, Seattle, WA 98103

Taproot Theatre Company is a professional, non‐profit theatre company with a multi‐faceted production program. Founded in 1976, Taproot Theatre Company tells stories of hope, serving the Pacific Northwest through live theatre and educational programs. 

Taproot Theatre Company is a member of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), Theatre Puget Sound (TPS) and Phinney Ridge Neighborhood Association (PNA).


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Third Annual Beers and the Bees event at The Local 104 Saturday, March 18, 2023

Saturday, March 11, 2023


Next Saturday March 18, 2023 The Local 104 will be throwing the Third Annual Beers and the Bees event. 

Come by and meet the local mason bee suppliers and pick up all you need for super garden pollination! 

Watts Brewing will also be there with a line up of their fantastic beer. Food specials as well! Noon to 4pm.

Spring is just around the corner

The Local 104 -  18498 Ballinger Way NE, Lake Forest Park, WA 98155 - corner of 35th NE and Ballinger Way.


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Hunting for hornets season three: a recap of WSDA’s hornet activities during the 2022 season

Saturday, February 11, 2023

I know -we're past Groundhog day - but the hornets are just catching up

One more year and Washington will be declared safe from Murder Hornets.

WSDA did not detect hornets in 2022. However, the hornet is not yet considered eradicated. Federal guidelines require three consecutive years without a confirmed detection to declare the hornets eradicated.

“While not detecting any hornets this year is promising, the work to ensure they are eradicated is not over yet,” Sven Spichiger, WSDA managing entomologist, said. “Research to develop a better trap continues and public reports – which account for half of all confirmed detections – remain critical.”

They are dangerous because they wipe out native bee colonies. They crossed the border from Canada and several nests were found in Whatcom county. 

For an update there is a free webinar: Hunting for hornets season three: a recap of WSDA’s hornet activities during the 2022 season

register to attend this free event here

For the first time since the northern giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) was initially detected in the state, the Washington State Department of Agriculture’s (WSDA) Pest Program did not trap or confirm any sightings of the hornets. 

New this year, WSDA entomologists went overseas to study the hornet in its native range with collaborating scientists. Learn how researchers are gathering data to aid development of trapping and tracking techniques. 

Attend this webinar with Dr. Chris Looney to learn how hornet eradication efforts continue and how you can help.


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Gloria's Insects: Well, yeah, it LOOKS like a Flying Stick Bug.

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Photo copyright Gloria Z. Nagler

And that's what the internet says this is! I'm open to other opinions;)
Made the shot in our yard a couple of weeks ago.

Update! Turns out it’s a Plume Moth! Sure doesn’t look like a moth.

--Gloria Z. Nagler



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Gloria's Insects: They call her Mellow Yellow...

Friday, October 28, 2022

 
Photo copyright Gloria Z. Nagler

(And zounds, what a pollen sac! Yellow Bumblebee in the community garden)

--Gloria Z. Nagler



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Web developer #5

Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Photo by Jessica Halterman

 Jessica took this perfect composition looking up at her porch light. 

I am envious - not just of her perfectly posed orb weaver but because this is what I wanted for my porch light. I had the job announcement up for a month while obnoxious little flying creatures snuck into my house.

But for the first time in years there were no applicants. It must be the pandemic and all the employee shortages. 

--Diane Hettrick



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Web developer #4

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

 
Photo by Barbara Twaddell

Barbara says she found a Special Twilight Zone flying saucer web design in her yard. I just wonder what that orb weaver is planning to catch. Flying squirrels? Space aliens? Murder hornets? Those giant moths?

Now I don't want to know.

--Diane Hettrick



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Web developer #3

Monday, October 10, 2022

Photo by Jocelyn Curry Asher
This web developer was doing her composting chores before getting to work on her web. 

Jocelyn Curry Asher, who shares the yard waste bin, did some research.

According to a Google comparison of similar images, this is an Araneus diadematus that crawled out of our compost bin on September 14 as I was filling it with dry debris.


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Web developer #2

Thursday, October 6, 2022

Photo by Wayne Pridemore
 
The web developer is taking a break.

Photo by Wayne Pridemore

Ah - back on duty.
Probably was shopping for the spiffy red striped outfit.

(no - I have no idea why the stripes are red. If I were more ambitious and less nocturnal I'd call Rod Crawford, "the spider man," at the Burke Museum, and ask him. Feel free.)

--Diane Hettrick



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Gloria's Insects: Oooh, yellow, thought Beulah. Don't know why, but I adore anything yellow!

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Photo copyright Gloria Z. Nagler

(Beulah appears to be the aptly monikered Yellow Bumblebee, common in the PNW. And she has an impressive pollen basket!)

--Gloria Z. Nagler



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Web developer: July

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Photo by Jay Sundahl
This was a July spider. It's not at the right angle for me to confidently identify it as my favorite orb weaver.

I could have used at least one of these during the summer to guard my porch light from the swarms of annoying small flying creatures that mob the porch and come in the house with us.

P.S. If spiders are not your thing, avoid articles with the Web Developer title. I have more spiders...
P.P.S. My clever friend Jay gets credit for the "Web developer" description (full disclosure)

--Diane Hettrick



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Gloria's Insects: Dana revved up her wings, extended her front legs,

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Photo copyright Gloria Z. Nagler

and began her launch to another blossom.

(She may look scary, but the Great Golden Digger Wasp is not an aggressive wasp. To the contrary, they are avid pollinators, and they aerate the soil for us; females dig into loose soil to create tunnels. So welcome to the digger wasps!)

--Gloria Z. Nagler



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