Tag: wasp

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10/08/2022 Ruby Grant park

Caterpillar on broom weed
A grasshopper with very worn wings on Grindelia.
A tree cricket on Grindelia!
A megachilid bee on Grindelia.
Fall is starting! Sumacs in particular are turning red.
A noctuid moth on Maximilian sunflowers.
A bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) nearby on the same sunflower plant.
So many Maximilian sunflowers!
Briar poses in front of the prairie filled with more sunflowers.
A purple aster!
On the first Liatris we saw, Paula found these purple caterpillars.
Mom mentioned Schinia sanguinea at home recently and we think that’s what these are. She saw the adult first then later the caterpillars. Two other Schinia sp can apparently also eat Liatris according to this website (and of course they don’t provide a citation). However the owlet moth caterpillar book, which Mom has, doesn’t mention this.
A sleepy Dainty Sulphur. It was a cloudy and cool day afternoon before sunset.
A parasitic wasp resting on snow-on-the-mountain.
Another interesting moth on Maximilian sunflowers.
Green grasshoppers were distracted so I got a close up of their textured greens!
The prairie is full of messages. Briar sniffs sunflowers as we walk by.
A long-horned bee rests on a Grindelia. There were so many Grindelia at all stages.
A very fuzzy Croton species.
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Wild Poinsettia (Euphorbia sp.)

The Wild Poinsettia is really buzzing with bees and other tiny friends lately over the past few days! It’s a very enthusiastic unsolicited volunteer but it seems to get a lot of customers now that the weather is cooling down into the 80s and 90s. It is a native plant and hosts also the very fun Euphorbia bug which has little pompoms on its antennae.

A tiny bee.
An Eastern tailed-blue
An immature euphorbia bug
A potter wasp
A sweat bee
A jumping spider hoping to snack on a visitor to the Euphorbia!
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06/28/2022

The accidental shot of the week. I didn’t notice this bee kicking a wasp off its foot until I looked at the photo later!
The bumblebee is feeding on Echinacea purpurea.
Front of the bumblebee face is yellow.
A zoomed in shot. The short overall hairs, all yellow on thorax and head, smoky dark wings, and minimal color on abdomen have led me to think it may be Bombus griseocollis, the brown-belted bumblebee. I have entered the sighting and photos on Bumble Bee Watch’s community science website where they can verify or correct this identification. This would be our fourth bumblebee species for the yard if I have identified it correctly. 🤞🤞
I found a second partridge pea plant blooming in the “prairie”!
An all orangish solider beetle on a Rudbeckia flower.
Shackleton the cat enjoyed hiding in brown crinkly paper. He has such big eyes!
Paula is experimenting with kombucha fermentation thanks to a culture from Abby. This is the first sample and contains a garden strawberry for added flavor. It was good!
Briar helps us observe bees out front. I’ll do a separate post with evening bees if any pics turned out.
A baby moon and stars watermelon!!
A baby praying mantis on the mint!
Paula and I weeded the orange and red section of the rainbow garden. It has a lot of invasive grass in it.
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06/27/2022

A paper wasp flies to mealy blue sage.
Using the two new wasp books, we narrowed it down to three species of Polistes: dorsalis, bellicosus, or fuscatus.
I’ll look this wasp up tomorrow in the pollinator wasps book.
It was going in and out of the hollow dead branch.
The native black currant is ripening!
Pizza with garden basil, garden onions, garden garlic.
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06/23/2022

The second Coryphantha sulcata seedling seems to have died, but the original is getting longer.
Another two spotted bumblebee (Bombus bimaculatus) visited the mealy blue sage today!
There was only one but I took a lot of angles. You can see the two spots if you zoom in.
In flight you get the best view of spots.
I liked the pollinating wasp zooming through in this picture.
Baby mantis!
I believe this is a baby red yucca, as that’s what I planted here, and it seems too sturdy to be grass.
A big ol mydas fly in the backyard!!
The native clematis likes its new sunnier spot about 20 ft to the west. It already has two or three new leaves!
I weeded the strawberry/honey berry bed but got called in for dinner when there was still a patch left. Maybe tomorrow.
I found a second pale zig zaggy spider in the backyard. Looking at it closer, I think it’s the wrong pattern and shape for Argiope aurantica, the usual banana spider.
Filling up the bird bath intrigued the dog.
African blue basil has flowers!
One of the many marigolds in the raised beds (we mixed the old seedheads and plants in over the winter) is beginning to flower!
The corn is going to town! A vaquero bean is flowering!
A fine little bell pepper!!
Cooling off after gardening with the mysterious Paper Protozoan. Note the hairy flagellum sticking out.
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06/21/2022

Gram guards the rooting juniperleaf.
There’s a new pollinator garden on campus!!
Very pleased at least one of the partridge pea seeds I sprinkled last year made it up.
Paper wasps made a nest on the debris of the invasive clematis.
A small lynx spider eats a fly
Just noticed that the long true bugs have little flat pom poms on their antennae.
A second individual. I think you have to see them from the right angle to get a good view of the antennae spots.
Dog
A helpful cat saw this wasp (maybe a spider wasp?) In the aloe and knocked the pot over.
I took it outside and shooed the friend off. No dinner in the house for it. Only cat.
I spotted a plume moth hiding on rain barrel stand.
Potatoes in straw bale getting big. Hope roots are too.
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06/15/2022 to bee or not to bee, plus “freeloader flies”

Before I left for work, I saw two bumblebees on the culinary sage flowers. Local bee expert José Montalva helped confirm the identification as Bombus bimaculatus (two spotted bumblebee) and sent me a very helpful article on the status of this and other bumblebee species in Oklahoma. It’s more of an eastern species so it is very cool to have them here on the edge of their range. This is also the third bumblebee species for our yard.
This was the best picture though not the best identification angle. Big pollen bags on her legs!
A little wasp on the purple coneflower.
On campus, I saw several Fiery Skippers on lantana.
Here’s another Fiery Skipper on campus lantana.
Back at home, the blue flax is thinking about blooming!
The Chef made egg drop soup with garden walking onions as a garnish.
Car ride!!
Saw a friend. Wow!
Little lumpy beetles are on a lot of flowers right now. They’re cute.
In the evening I saw one or two more two-spotted bumblebees, this time over on the perennial coreopsis.
I didn’t manage to get a good picture of the spots in the evening.
But I got some decent side views.
Lightning bug!
A paper wasp.
An immature assassin bug eating some sort of probable pentatomid bug.  Zoom in though and you’ll see several kinds of flies!!  I’m not sure, but I think they might be some kind of kleptoparasitic fly that steals nibbles from bigger predators.
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06/11/2022

The Chef made no bake lemon curd/ cheesecake layered parfaits with homemade whipped cream, farm share blueberries, and homemade granola for a garden tour.
Prepared the night before in the fridge.
Perfect for the tropically humid day.
A wasp carrying a caterpillar
Spittlebug
Hello Tuqu
This young man.
Two Texas dandelions from home! White specks are elderberry petals.
Bee fly
Possibly a baby Grindelia leaf??
A second Coryphantha sulcata seedling came up!!!!!
Lace bug (Tineidae) on giant ragweed leaf.
Nobody home…
…except for this crab spider!
My keeled treehoppers have a big family!!
Soooo manyyyyyy
Shackleton and Briar disagree about social distancing.
A nice jumping spider.
It’s on a houseplant that is outside for the summer.
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06/07/2022 catching up

A Fiery Skipper on lantana on campus.
A native fleabane in the front yard.
Another Fiery Skipper on the verbena at home. I need to replace this non native moss verbena with prairie verbena but I can’t get it to germinate. 😡
A paper wasp on mealy blue sage. It looks weirdly purple here.
Using my new copy of the social wasps book, I narrowed this down to Polistes fuscatus or Polistes bellicosus, based on not much black on legs, black tipped antennae, and the yellow ring around the abdomen.
The Hedeoma is flowering!