May 9th, 2007
love on a dandelion
I wasn’t going to post anything for a few days as we’ve been dealing with a stressful event here, but I couldn’t resist sharing a photo taken this morning. While hanging laundry out on the clothesline in the garden, I noticed at least a two or three Spotted Lady Beetles (Coleomegilla maculata) moving about over each of the many of the dandelion flowers in the garden. Some of them were mating. The Spotted Lady Beetle is native to Canada. It’s great to find so many of them active on the flowers. This species can be recognized by its elongated body — in contrast to the rounded body of many other lady beetles. The background colour is a sort of pinkish red, and the elytra (wing covers) have several black spots that are of similar shape on each side. The pronotum (front part of body ahead of the elytra) has two black spots. If you look carefully, you can see the head with buggy little eyes and the two antennae.
As you might have guessed, we don’t spray our lawns and we like dandelions. Without them, we wouldn’t see such wonderful sights as today’s Spotted Lady Beetles. I also noticed some species of solitary bees mating on the flowers this morning. That’s also a good thing to see considering that populations of other pollinators such as the Honey Bee are suffering at the moment.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Hello! I m here!
May 9th, 2007 at 11:32 am
My, they are having a good time, aren’t they? Then along came a spider…
We don’t spray our dandelions either, but on the other hand we don’t see so many now that we don’t have a lawn ;-)
Now here’s a puzzle that I’ll relate tomorrow – have you ever seen a syrphid fly (I’m fairly sure) that exudes a white droplet of fluid from the tip of a hind leg when disturbed?
May 9th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Wayne – I suppose one could hardly call our lawn a lawn either — it’s more like pasture as we let it grow quite wild with all kinds of clover, alfalfa, hawkweed, pearly everlasting, and dandelions in the “short” areas, and goldenrod, milkweed and a host of other plants in the “long” areas. Makes for some wonderful insect and spider habitat!
And, in answer to your question – no! I can’t say I’ve ever seen that happen. I did have a Nursery Web Spider do something like that, but I’m not quite sure where the droplet came from — somewhere under its body — it sort of squirted fluid at me when I put my hand near (I’ve never read of such a thing, but perhaps it’s not uncommon??).
May 9th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Bev – I have no idea! I’ll have to throw it out to the wisdom of the Internets. One possible clue, the fly was on the apical region of a near-flowering milkweed.
May 9th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
All the birds and insects in our yard seem to be engaged in the same activity lately. Just before dinner tonight Roger looked out and announced, “the juncoes are having sex on the wheelbarrow. No wait, now they’re having sex on the pitchfork handle.” It’s been like that around here for days. Whee.
May 9th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Wayne – I’ll be looking forward to reading a follow-up on this insect when you post more about it.
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robin – Yes, everyone seems to be pretty busy around here too. Next, we should be seeing plenty of new insects, birds and other creatures.
May 10th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
I saw what looked to be a bee – very very tiny – darting from flower to flower along a prairie trail today. He seemed to have a tiny tiny proboscis – but flew away before I could even attempt a photo. He may have had a dark stripe down his back. I just couldn’t get over how tiny he was. I guess since I used the word ‘tiny’ 4 times (now 5) you’ve guessed I figured I thought he was pretty tiny (that’s 6) (-:
May 10th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I hope the stressful event eases out of your way and stops being stressful. Great photo, by the way, as always!
May 10th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Cathy – that was probably some type of solitary bee. I’ve seen seeing quite a few of them on the flowers around here too — and yes, some of them have been very, very tiny too! (-:
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John – Well, the stress continues, but hopefully things will turn out okay. Thanks re: the photo and the good wishes.
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Hello, Greetings!
I’ll be back.