Ultra Green Sweat Bee on the apricot cosmos
For the first time ever, I spotted an Ultra Green Sweat Bee female Agapostemon texanus in the garden. From a distance she looked like a...
The honey bee and the California sunflower
The California sunflower plant that I bought from Oaktown Native Nursery last Fall is starting to produce blossoms. ...
The California towhees
A pair of California towhees spent some quality time around the lambs ears in the morning. Now that the blooming period is over for many...
The honey bee and the Agastache plant
Today I purchased yet another native plant for the backyard, an Agastache hybrid from the Sweetwater nursery. I had barely re-potted it...
the Lesser Goldfinches
Earlier this summer I started to hear a different kind of bird song, very sweet and cheerful. It turns out that we have Lesser...
Cuckoo bee!
This weekend I spotted this cuckoo bee, a female coelioxys on the naked buckwheat blossoms. These bees are natural enemies of other bee...
Carpenter bees are back
I haven't seen carpenter bees in the garden since early summer. And then yesterday afternoon I heard the distinct buzz of a larger,...
Honey bee on the fennel flowers
Now that the swallowtail caterpillars have vacated the fennel plant to morph into chrysalises then butterflies, somewhere nearby in the...
Ivory banded digger male bee waking up on Klondike cosmos
Last week I observed an ivory banded digger male bee sleeping on a prom dress cosmos blossom. And this morning I observed another ivory...
Honey bees in the morning
Here is another bee waking up in the Prom Dress cosmos blossoms, this time a honey bee. It stayed in this position for at least ten...
