There was a lot to notice on today’s muddy hike—fungi, spikemosses, roaring creeks, first flowers, gorgeous views. Lots to wonder about too, including why the pollen on the bee’s legs was a darker shade of yellow than the pollen it was collecting.
Our nature journal group met at Will Rogers State Historic Park to journal the fire recovery. Will Rogers himself loved eucalypts, and many are planted there. I noticed that the epicormic growth and the crown sprouts were all being ravaged, and took a closer look.
Just in time for Halloween, a discarded (exo)skeleton.
A little something I’m working on for school walks at the state park.
Reading up on this grasshopper, I learned that it is a problematic invasive species in Hawaii. In 2004, a major swarming event on the island of Nīhoa devastated approximately 90% of the island’s vegetation. Likely introduced to Hawaii several decades ago, it has since spread throughout the archipelago, aided by its ability to fly over 300 miles across open ocean!
That last fact blew my mind. 🤯
One of the highlights of Wild Wonder Day 2 was the session on native bees with scientist/artist Nina Sokolov. I met Nina last year; she’s a total badass. She snatches bumblebees right off the flower with one hand.
Feron kingi, commonly known as the red cone gall wasp, is a member of the Cynipidae family.
The adult female lays her eggs within the leaves of several white oak species, including the valley oak (Quercus lobata). Once the egg hatches, the larva begins feeding on the leaf tissue, triggering the plant to form a hard, protective structure—a small red cone about 5 mm tall. This gall benefits the insect, providing it with additional plant tissue to consume. Inside the gall, the larva pupates and eventually matures into a parthenogenetic female adult before emerging from the tip of the cone. That’s right — there are no male gall wasps.
Female valley carpenter bees are glossy black all over, but this one had a ring of bright yellow pollen on her thorax. At first I thought it was a new species, but no, she was just dressed in powdery finery. The male X. sonorina is golden brown with green eyes — I hope to see one some time soon. Perhaps I shouldn’t be wishing for carpenter bees around our tumbledown old house—they are so named because they tunnel through wood to make their nests. They avoid painted or stained wood, but our place has plenty of exposed timber they might find suitable for excavating.
I had seen adult harlequin bugs* before, but never the nymph stage. Both life stages are a major pest of cabbage and related brassica crops, feeding on the stems and leaves with their piercing-sucking mouthparts. That didn’t seem to be happening on the bladderpods today, as far as I could see. But who knows that those sneaky little mouth-straws are doing!
*This is different from the insect known in Australia as a harlequin bug, Dindymus versicolor.
Kim and I sat by the creek and watched the ants. What a lovely way to pass an hour.
hashiworks 