This is a photo heavy diary showing what happens when you mow around clover patches and let the flowers mature. Across the country, communities are erupting in outrage over another incident of cops horribly killing a black man. I’m a month late on a manuscript, and we’re busy in planting season at work, which is on top of extra work from working at home. Forgive me, I need a break. I hope this brief respite helps a few others who could use a little time on a lawn too.
These pictures are from an approximately 200 square foot patch of clover in Missouri. They were taken in a total time of about one hour spread over two mid-afternoons on May 28 and 29, 2020. Selection of decent pictures and preparation of the compilations took much longer.
Until community members provide suggestions, there are no initial names provided. I would never post this if I took the time to ID these bugs. Community annotations will be welcome and added to the diary and image tags as time permits.
BTW, the title image is a single bug that I was unable to group with other ones. It could be one of the ones shown below. If so, I missed it.
With that, here are a bunch of pictures from a small patch of clover.
Here is the toe end of my shoe to show the scale of the flowers and insects.
Updated 5/31/20 in the afternoon to include community annotations. Thanks everyone. Please continue to suggest additions or corrections as you wish.
Among the most common flying bugs observed were familiar bees, honeybees (Apis mellifera) (HT BrownsBay). I didn’t count, but roughly estimate that there were dozens.
Perhaps more abundant, but smaller, and, therefore, less noticeable were these tiny beings, flower flies of the family Syrphidae (HT BrownsBay).
Less abundant, but more conspicuous were the furry yellow ones. It looks to me like multiple species, but I have no idea, I’m a plant biologist who can hardly spot a tomato. Besides, my bee, wasp, and fly butt hair and stripe key is woefully out of date.
Update: These may all be bumblebees (Bombus), the gentle giants (HT BrownsBay). I still think there might be 2 or three species, but am not an entomologist. It could just be me grouping them by their orientation relative to the camera.
CaptBLI suggests the following excellent guide for the Bumblebee selections. If you’re waiting for me to do that and report on species IDs, just sit back and I’ll take care of it just as soon as I get everything else wrapped up in the next year or 10.
Others with black thoraxes and abdomens were pretty sparse. In my limited sightings, it seemed that the first bees shown above might be wary of these guys.
They may be solitary bees, possibly long-horned bees (Tribe Eucerini) ( HT BrownsBay), or sweat bees (HT CaptBLI).
Thanks to Elowreyd for pointing out that these appear to be mason bees / orchard bees, and for pointing out that we can help them out with nesting spaces.
Twice, I saw a bigger one that flew quickly and landed briefly on a few clovers. Was it hunting? Don’t know if I saw two different ones or the same one circling back.
It has been identified as a Red Paper Wasp (HT CaptBLI, BrownsBay). According to wikipedia, they feed on caterpillars and nectar fluids. That was some quick gulping if they were grabbing fluids on their brief stops I saw.
There were a handful of what appear to be wasps to me. Maybe the title picture was one of these.
Thanks to CaptBLI, these appear to be Bald-Faced Hornets
To finish, here are a few single sightings. Two were moths, one being a brown moth alighting on senescing brown flowers. The other was a dragonfly? damselfly.
This blue butterfly is a blue, a member of the butterfly family Lycaenida (HT BrownsBay). It looks like the Western Tailed-Blue, Everes amuntula in the CA Audubon field guide (HT hopeful4life). A bit more research indicates that it is the Eastern Tailed Blue (E. comyntas).
Here is a skipper (left) (family Hesperiidae) and a damselfly (right) (HT funningforrest, 2n10, hopeful4life, Besame, Brownsbay). Thanks and wow, they could be from the same family. That’s a surprise to my untrained eye. Nevermind, they are not the same family. I misread Brownsbay’s comment. However, it did get me to post this link to a MO Dept of Conservation page on damselflies.
That’s who I saw at lunch at clover.