Songbirds During a MN Winter

Minnesota Naturalist Association weekend...painting, exploring!

Time lapse painting: Green Darner dragonfly

I'm leading a painting workshop soon and needed to get some practice in with acrylic paints, a medium I haven't used since high school. Here's a clip showing my work. (Check for our rescue kitty, Gustav, photobombing the second half of the clip.)

Naturalist Artist Vlog: Duff (No, not Homer's favorite beer).

June and early July phenology

Here are some fun shots from the past several days. 

Spicebush or black swallowtail on Vervain in the rain garden. Just noticed the Vervain blooming this past week. 

Butterfly weed (left), a type of milkweed, looking showy and covered in native bees too small for me to get photos of. 

Speaking of milkweed, this Common milkweed is hosting a BIG Monarch caterpillar, almost ready to form a J and go into chrysalis. This guy has his own manure pile, loads of "frass" or caterpillar poop. 

Ebony jewelwing hanging out along Purgatory creek, near home. There were hundreds of these along the creek banks. Delicate lacy little things...hard to believe. I know they often emerge in masses but had never seen that until recently. 

Ok, have a great July 4th holiday. Thanks for reading. 

-Laurel

Vlog: Color strings, warm tints

Mixing strings of color is a way to explore how your palette interacts with white. It gives me insights about how it will behave along with my other colors as well. 

Native Bee Survey

Last week I attended a native bee identification training. It was fantastic and very timely since I will be leading a citizen science survey (say that 3 times fast) coming up in about a week and a half. If you're interested in learning more join me at Lowry Nature Center June 10th 12:30-2:30 to help us survey our restored prairies!



Miner bee

Many folks don't realize 1) that honeybees aren't native and 2) that most bees in MN are native bees, around 400 species, but that's where the survey comes in. The last survey was in 1919, and we can only guess at what difference we'll see in results in the last 98 years! There's only one species of honeybee, and it's from Europe, and has many struggles with surviving our climate. Native bees have developed in sync with our climate and plants and require very little input from us to survive.

But there is a catch, all bees are suffering from a loss of quality habitat and increase in the amount of chemicals we use to raise our food. For the honeybee that means longer flights and more energy lost gather food. But they are long distance fliers.

Native bee nest tunnels (I swear it's not poop)

 

 

 

Native bees are often solitary nesters, or only loosely colonial. This means that the female is responsible for finding food, building the nest, doing all the jobs a honeybee uses a whole colony to complete. The way they accomplish this is to have a much smaller range for their habitat. 300ft in some cases!

 

Bumble bee colony

This means native bees need to get their habitat JUST right. With food, water and nest areas, everything they need, close by. Habitats like the one below...

 

Crow Hassan restored prairie is a great example of a high quality habitat, but in some ways bees can benefit even more from your yard. If you have blooming plants throughout the season, water, patches of sand or soil (for nesting material) and don't use chemicals on your yard, you're helping pollinators. You have all their habitat needs in a small area, so they can focus their energy on rearing the next generation. Helping these important organisms out isn't hard. And learning about the biodiversity we have right under our noses is fun! I'll share some of the new-to-me bees I learn this summer right here in future posts.

Until then, thanks for reading.

-Laurel

Virgin Islands, from February 2017

Here are some notes from a recent trip, to get away for a few days in winter. 

On St. Thomas, leaving Charlotte Amalie for Red Hook, to catch the ferry to St. John, where we spent most of our visit. 

Leaving Charlotte Amalie

 Our campsite was at Cinnamon Bay, here's the view a few steps from where we stayed. We had a few rain days, but took advantage of the sun being out each chance we got.

Cinnamon Bay

We took a looooooong hike (15 miles) across the island to Reef Bay to visit ruins, petroglyphs, and this old sugar mill. Lots of bats, very interesting old structures. The steppes used to raise sugar we still apparent all the way down the side of the mountain to the shore.

I couldn't resist the video, I've never seen a hermit crab take a drink, so here you are. You're welcome.

Big old gears that used to power the mill, strewn about inside the ruin. They provide some parkour challenges for the hermit crabs in-residence. I didn't get any good portable photos of the bats. Just look for the guano and you will find a group nestling together to sleep until evening. 

Looking back up to the mill, from the large circle where donkeys would've powered the giant grinder to break down raw sugar cane to get ready to make sugar and rum. 

Chilling with Chickadees.

 

I visited a special bird feeding site called Chickadee Landing. It's 0 Fahrenheit today and windchill is -21, so bear with me, it's hard to talk and move my face!

 

 

 

 

We use this site to get close to nature with school groups. Despite the cold temps the entire time I was there I was surrounded by Chickadees and other birds eagerly await the suet. It's a magical site to visit and makes you realize even in the dead of winter, nature is alive and kicking.

Late summer Monarchs

I found this little guy hanging from a thread in the garden. I had a large area of milkweed, but late this summer it turned skunky. Lots of rain, humidity, little wind, and the leaves were mildewing. This attracted aphids, and there were clouds of flies and wasps feeding on the aphids! Nature's full circle; but not quite what I had in mind for the planting area. 

The plants had no signs of eat marks from caterpillars (indeed, who could compete with those aphids!?) and adult female Monarchs wisely avoided egg laying in this area. After ripping out nearly the whole bed, there was one, little, wayward milkweed left. With eat marks. And upon inspection I found this little caterpillar dangling in the wind! I put him/her back on the leaf. I cut the plant and brought it inside. I set up a vase with water and now this tiny caterpillar is enjoying a prime view of my living room. And pooping all over my mantle. 

You go little caterpillar, you go! 

This one is probably around 2nd instar..? I'd have to look it up, but it's got a few more molts before it's ready to pupate into a butterfly. And yes, it should have time yet this late summer or fall. In fact I'll probably bring this one into the nature center for visitors to enjoy the process. We will also tag the adult that emerges. The tags provide valuable info about migration routes, overwintering locations and other pieces of the life history puzzle of this far-traveling insect. 

Thanks for reading, 
Laurel 

Pretty Important Pollinators

Native bee genus Melissodes

Pollinators are a hot topic on many people’s minds.

 

The act of pollination can be achieved by wind, water, and animals. Animal pollinators are birds, butterflies, bats and insects; specifically bees! Bees (and other highly-visible insects like Monarch butterflies) are taking a hit due to habitat loss and increasing use of chemicals that are integrated into plants. I will briefly outline similarities and differences between bees and changes you can implement to improve habitat for these important invertebrates.

In much of the US we rely heavily on the European honeybee for large-scale pollination. However, there are roughly 400 species of native bees that are of great importance in Minnesota.

          The main difference between European honeybees and native bees is the scale of the colony and how social they are and the conditions they are able to forage in. Honeybees work on a huge scale, with one colony containing up to 60,000 or more individual bees and able to cover up to 2 square miles of territory on their search for resources. Because of this large colony, they are excellent for commercial/large scale crop pollination. Large colonies need large stores of honey to survive winter. But honeybees don’t forage in cold conditions, and struggle with cold Minnesota winters.

          Native bees are more solitary. The Bumblebees are the most social; sharing a hive entrance and nesting area, and each female tending her own larvae. Most native bees work on an individual scale to mate, build a home, and provide resources for the next generation. They are able to forage in temps just barely above freezing. Many are even stingless.

          With this large to-do list, native bees tend to occupy much smaller territories. Many of these native bees only fly 300ft to find all their habitat needs. Meaning if your yard contains all the nectar, pollen, and nesting materials needed, you could be an important home for generations of these insects! As they say in real estate: location, location, location!

          Some simple gardening tips can be a great aid to all our pollinators! Use native species that have a variety of bloom times, trees and shrubs too. Stop using insecticides; particularly neonicotinoid class chemicals. You have to be extra careful when purchasing plants to ensure they are not grown with “neonics”. If they are steer clear: they will be deadly to all insects including pollinators. Provide a little patch of mud and sand for ground nesting natives like Mason and Bumblebees. With these simple changes you can sit back and enjoy a huge variety of pollinating visitors.  Check out www.hummingforbees.com for great local pollinator info, and www.xerces.org for nationwide pollinator info.

 

Laurel Sundberg