North Yuba Naturalist: Down in the Garden!

Western Tiger Swallowtail- Papilio rutulus rutulus

In our neighborhood, most of the native flowers have already blossomed and gone to seed. I seriously searched for blooming plants on my morning walks this week, but only found a few Indian Pinks and some native Pipestems/Clematis flowering! Because we have lots of non-native flowers in bloom in our garden right now, it has become a fabulous spot to watch moths, butterflies, beetles, wasps, spiders, grasshoppers, and birds!

The Western Swallowtail Butterflies have been around for a few months, lots and lots of them! More than I have ever seen! Here is some information about them from https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org

"Life History: Males patrol canyons or hilltops for receptive females. Females lay eggs singly on surface of host plant leaves. Caterpillars feed on leaves and rest on silken mats in shelters of curled leaves. Chrysalids hibernate.

Caterpillar Hosts: Leaves of cottonwood and aspen (Populus), willows (Salix), wild cherry (Prunus), and ash (Fraxinus).

Adult Food: Nectar from many flowers including thistles, abelia, California buckeye, zinnia, and yerba santa.

Habitat: Woodlands near rivers and streams, wooded suburbs, canyons, parks, roadsides, and oases."

Snowberry Clearwing Moth- Hemaris diffinis

A few large, unusual, and uncommon moths showed up in our garden this week. They were Hummingbird Moths, specifically Snowberry Clearwing Moths! I see them once in a while in our garden. Their clear wings beat so fast, it's almost impossible to see them! They also fan out their tail scales and hover in front of flowers, just like Hummingbirds! I've watched them feed on our Butterfly Bush for several days! They are a large insects! At first I thought it was a Bumblebee, but then I realized the abdomen was much longer. The following information on this moth is from the website https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators

"Perhaps one of the most delightful insect visitors to your garden is the hummingbird moth. Several species of the genus Hemaris deserve this name and for very good reason. They fly and move just like hummingbirds. Like them, they can remain suspended in the air in front of a flower while they unfurl their long tongues and insert them in flowers to sip their nectar. They even emit an audible hum like hummingbirds.

Like the majority of moths and butterflies, the adult hummingbird moths feed on nectar from a variety of flowers, but their larvae/caterpillars need more specific food plants, such as several species of honeysuckle, dogbane, or some members of the rose family such as hawthorn, cherries, and plums.

The females entice the males with an aroma or pheromone that they produce from glands at the tip of the abdomen. After mating, they lay their tiny, round, green eggs on their larvae host plants, usually on the underside of the leaves.

The caterpillars have a horn at the rear end and are commonly green, well camouflaged among the leaves. When they are fully-grown they drop to the ground, spin a loose cocoon and pupate, partially protected by leaf litter. That leaf litter so hated by some gardeners provides a shelter to this beautiful pollinator. In the north, where the season is short there is only one generation per year; the pupa spends the whole winter well hidden and the adult does not emerge until the next spring."

White-lined Sphinx Moth on Beebalm - Hyles lineata

This year is also an incredible year for White-lined Sphinx Moths. I usually see them in our garden in early spring, and only just a few of them. Lately I've seen them in our garden AND in the Lakes Basin Meadows! Wow! They are large moths, and their wings move so fast they are just a blur! The caterpillars of these moths are huge, measuring almost 5" in length! They voraciously eat blooming wildflowers! After 2 weeks of eating, the caterpillars burrow into the ground to pupate. After 2-3 more weeks, they emerge as adults. In Spring the adults will mate, and the females will lay eggs! They are also called the "Hummingbird Moth", because of their size, and the way that they hover and rapidly flap their wings! The additional information about them is from https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org.

Life History: Adults usually fly at dusk, during the night, and at dawn, but they will also fly during the day. Caterpillars pupate in shallow burrows in the ground. Massive population buildups occur which stimulate emigrations to colonize more northern areas.

Caterpillar Hosts: A great diversity of plants including willow weed (Epilobium), four o'clock (Mirabilis), apple (Malus), evening primrose (Oenothera), elm (Ulmus), grape (Vitis), tomato (Lycopersicon), purslane (Portulaca), and Fuchsia.

Adult Food: Nectar from a variety of flowers including columbines, larkspurs, petunia, honeysuckle, moonvine, bouncing bet, lilac, clovers, thistles, and Jimson weed.

Habitat: A wide variety of open habitats including deserts, suburbs, and gardens.

Fritillary Butterfly - unknown genus/species

Identifying Butterflies can be a little difficult sometimes. In the Fritillary Group of Butterflies, I find it particularly hard, as they are so similar. So I don't know what the genus and species are of the butterfly pictured in the above photo. Interestingly, violets are the host plant of all the larva of the local Fritillaries! Right now the adults are really feeding heavily on our Butterfly Bush!

Common Checkered Clerid Beetle - Trichodes ornatus

There are a whole bunch of beetles in our garden right now. Some are very tiny and hard to see while others are quite visible. Beetles are one of the most important pollinators in the insect world. They eat pollen, not nectar, as well as plant parts! The following information is from http://ucanr.edu/sites/PollenNation.

"Beetles make up the largest group of pollinating animals because there are so many of them! They are responsible for pollinating 88% of the 240,000 flowering plants around the world! Research has shown that beetles are capable of seeing color, but they mainly rely on their sense of smell for feeding and finding a place to lay their eggs. Many beetle species eat pollen, so the plants they visit must produce a lot of pollen to make sure that there is enough left to pollinate the flower after the beetles are done eating!"

Black Ichneumonid Wasp - Dusona sp.?

Most adult wasps feed on nectar, not other insects! That's why there are so many in our garden! The following information is from https://www.westernexterminator.com.

"A wasp's diet varies between species. In most instances, wasps feed their larvae bits of insects that they have killed and chopped up, but the adults feed on sugars from nectar, aphid honeydew, or a sugary liquid produced by their larvae. Most species of wasps are actually parasitic insects, which means they lay their eggs inside other insects and they rarely bother us humans. The wasps that you see most often are the social wasps that come searching for human food."

Unknown Social Wasps

There is a shed down by the garden, and when I opened the screen door I found this wasp nest on the inside frame. I couldn't identify them, but they are obviously "social" wasps. I took this photo in the early morning, when it was too cold for the wasps to move. It looked like they were definitely protecting their brood.

There are about 20 species of social wasps in North America. These wasps are in the family Vespidae and typically fall into three groups: yellowjackets, hornets and common paper wasps. The following information is from the website https://genent.cals.ncsu.edu.

"Eusocial behavior among wasps is found only in certain members of the family Vespidae. These insects are commonly called paper wasps, hornets, and yellowjackets. They build communal nests by mixing wood fibers with saliva to form a paper-like material that can be molded into brood cells and other nest components. The brood comb (cells where larvae are reared) is always constructed like an inverted umbrella with open ends of the hexagonal cells facing downward. Workers usually cling to the underside of the comb as they guard the nest, feed the larvae, and perform other housekeeping chores. All social wasps are carnivores; their prey consists mostly of caterpillars and flies. The wasps chew up their victims’ bodies into a paste that can be fed to their larvae and, in return, the larvae produce a nutritional syrup that is consumed by the adults. A small colony of 200 yellowjackets may kill and eat about 5000 caterpillars over the course of a summer."

Goldenrod Crab Spider (female and male) - Musumen vatia

So of course there are predators in our garden, waiting on the flowers for an unsuspecting insect to stop by. Crab Spiders are perhaps the most obvious. The name refers to the crab-like shape of the body and its ability to walk sideways and backwards, just like a crab. Crab Spiders are active during the day. They can slowly change their color from white to yellow to orange to green, depending on the color of the plant they're on. It can take 1-2 days for the color to change. This one really matched the color of the unopened hairy pussy willows. These spiders do not spin webs, but rely on camouflage and ambush to catch their prey. They prefer bees, flies, and butterflies, but will eat a variety of insects that come to feed on the nectar or pollen of a flower. They don't "eat" their prey with their jaws. First they inject their prey with venom that paralyzes them. Then they bite a small hole in their prey and vomit their digestive fluid into the prey's body! This fluid dissolves the prey's internal organs and muscles! This dissolved solution is then sucked out! Geez!

The inset photo is the male crab spider, that is mainly just interested in mating with a female and simultaneously not getting eaten by her!

Unidentified Spider

There are a bunch of different spiders in our garden. I couldn't identify the one in the above photo, but I'm sure it's also hanging out and hoping to nab an unsuspecting insect, or trap one in its web. I'll submit this photo to bugguide.net and see what they say.

Katydid (?) - Scudderia sp.

I found this grasshopper or katydid with a bright green body in our garden this week! It looked like it was brand new and had maybe just molted out of a nymphal stage! See the translucent exuvia below it? These insects will go through several molts over a period of 60-90 days, until they have matured to adults. As adults they feed on plants, including leaves and flowers.

Anna's Hummingbird (female) - Calypte anna

The most common Hummingbird in our garden are the Anna's Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds have the highest metabolism of any warm blooded organism! They have to eat a lot to stay alive, but they actually spend 75-80% of their day perching, and only 10-15% of their time eating! The wildflower nectar that they eat is 55% sucrose, 24% glucose, and 21% fructose! They also supplement their diet with insects, such as mosquitoes, gnats, aphids, and spiders! At night they go into a state of torpor, to conserve energy, which slows their metabolic rate to 1/15 of their normal rate! Torpor also causes their body temperature to drop from 40 degrees to 18 degrees, their heartbeat rate drops from over 1,000 beats per minute to 50-180 beats per minute, and their respiration rate (normally 250 breaths per minute) slows down as well!

Spotted Towhee (juvenile) - Pipilo maculatus

I'm happy to report that there are several juvenile songbirds in our garden! They are no doubt eating the insects that are feeding on the plants! I don't have time to write about them, but thought you might enjoy these photos.

Bullock's Oriole (juvenile) - Icterus bullockii

Western Tanager (juvenile) - Piranga ludoviciana

Swamp Onion - Allium validum

I've been lucky enough to get up the Lakes Basin four times in the past eight days! I hiked by myself up to the Helgramite Lakes, to Smith Lake and Howard Meadow with my husband, to Lost Lake with some friends, and Haskell Peak with some other friends!! What a great, delightful week! I am filled with beauty! We saw thousands of gorgeous wildflowers in the wet meadows. If it continues to stay hot, they won't last but another week or two. Get out there if you can! It is absolutely amazingly beautiful!

Corn Lily - Veratrum californicum

I mentioned this before in recent blogs, but this is an incredible year for blooming Corn Lilies! There are hundreds and sometimes thousands of them in the Lakes Basin meadows! What a delight to see them blooming so profusely!

Western Tofieldia/False Asphodel - Triantha occidentalis

This lovely white flowered plant is actually a carnivore! It has a unique feature of trapping small insects near its insect-pollinated flowers. Flower stems are coated with sticky hairs that produce a digestive enzyme known as phosphatase, which digests the small insects. The hairs can catch midges and gnats but are not sticky enough to capture larger insects like bees and butterflies that pollinate the flowers! How cool!

Leopard Lily - Lilium pardalinum

In some areas of the Lakes Basin there are thickets with hundreds of Leopard Lilies this year! More than we've ever seen! They are so beautiful, I never tire of photographing them.