The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge.
We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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September 18, 2019
Pacific Northwest
We’re seeing a late burst of insects here in what feels like late fall already, so much September rain. I got bit by mosquitoes while standing outside on the deck after dark, blunderbugs are everywhere, I’m bumping into bees and hornets busily making the most of the tail end of the garden. Yesterday I passed a mixed flock of tiny insect foragers hopping around in a big thicket of Oceanspray which has gone to seed. Bugs eat seed, birds eat bugs. I’ve seen these same kinds of flighty foragers in this same thicket at this time of year before.
They were mostly Bushtits. Males have a dark eye: see the bird in the title image. Females have a light eye. The plumage of both is soft grey brown.
They hop around so quickly it’s impossible to count them but there were at least 15. It was also pretty tough catching photos of them in focus since they are darting around within the foliage. This picture actually has two in focus:
In the canopy of the thicket were a couple of Hutton’s vireos. Note the white eye-ring — I thought they might be kinglets (yet another insect-forager) but kinglets have yellow boots. Vireos don’t.
The bushtits have longer tails and no wing bars.
Both birds are year round residents in Western Washington and while both eat insects, they have a slightly different niche making it efficient to forage in a mixed flock, safety in numbers. The Bushtits are quicker, chasing after bugs lower down in the thicket while of vireos are more measured in their predation up in the canopy.
Bushtit prey:
81% animal material (insects and spiders) and 19% vegetable matter by count; little variation among months. However, winter stomachs contained fewer animal food items, summer stomachs exhibited 100% animal material.
44% Hemiptera (true bugs, including scale),
>10% Coleoptera (beetles),
16% Lepidoptera (mostly caterpillars and pupae),
<1.5% Hymenoptera (wasps and ants);
remaining 8% made up mostly of spiders and some insects.
Vegetable matter: fruit; small galls (probably for the contents) and tiny seeds.
(- Birds of North America)
Vireo prey:
98% animal matter, chiefly insects and a few spiders, with about
46% hemipterans (particularly stink-bugs, assassin-bugs, and leaf-bugs);
25% lepidopterans;
13% coleopterans,
smaller quantities of other insect taxa eg homopterans, including leaf-hoppers, plant-hoppers;
2% arachnids.
(- Birds of North America)
So when we say they eat bugs, we mean BUGS. True bugs = hemipterans. Those guys have a triangle on their back, easy ID feature.
A still photo of the Oceanspray thicket looks empty:
but a brief video gives a little better impression of what going on with these flighty foragers.
🍂
Overcast in the Pacific Northwest islands this morning. Some fog, visibility half a mile. A fairly warm fall day, temp in high 50s already. Light breeze. Sun may break through later.
What’s up in nature in your area today?
🍁
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