A Summer of Pollinators

Many mornings and afternoons during this summer, I have photographed butterflies, bees, wasps, and other pollinators busily gathering pollen in my flower and herb beds. Moving slowly so as not to startle my photographic prey, I paid much more attention to the visitors in my gardens than I might have otherwise. I encountered small dramas I would never have witnessed: a spider eating a bee, a tiny anole munching on a bug it had just caught, butterfly skippers trying to mate (the male seeming much more interested in the enterprise than the female), a caterpillar camouflaging itself with spent mountain mint bracts. I was reminded of how much of life goes on around of us, oblivious to us, yet still so much affected by the actions that we take. I have determined that one of my actions will continue to make my yard a place for pollinators, and, as a consequence, the other creatures that prey on them. The mountain mint attracted a diversity of pollinators, and so I will prepare the ground so that the patch can spread into a little larger area. The weedy portulaca, with its yellow flowers that stay open only during a few hours in the morning, seemed to be loved by the bees, and so I will make more room for it next summer.  Having left the university classroom where I taught for so many years, I have become a student again in my own backyard.  

Note, added 18 August, 2013: The strange creature in photos 2-5 below is an ambush bug.

As the summer progressed, more and more of these small black and white striped bees appeared in the garden

 

At first I thought this creature was a couple of dried mountain mint bracts--until it moved....so tiny and strange...

 

A few days later, I saw the creature again and took more photographs.

 

And then I saw the strange creature eating a fly. Did it kill the fly... or was it a scavenger?

 

Life and death struggles were going all around me, largely unseen!

But sometimes I encountered a beautiful dance between pollinator and flower.

Here a metallic sweat bee seems drunk with pollen.

One morning in early August I caught a green lynx spider feasting on a bee.

Afterward, a spiny stink bug approached the "crime scene."

I was surprised that many wasps are pollinators, too.

I am not sure what this very tiny crab spider wanted with the caterpillar that had camouflaged itself with dead mountain mint bracts, but I bet it wasn't altruistic.

But sometimes one can find love among the flowers.

And if not love, at least food (look at those eyes!). . .

. . . and shelter