Backyard pollinators in March

Our patio garden - a mix of local and exotic early bloomers

It's March, and the 'garden' part of our property is erupting in color. We plant a few exotics like aloes close to the house.  They are succulent low water-users from Africa, so they do well here in Arizona. Hummingbirds, Gila Woodpeckers and Verdins love them, but as most imported flowers, they are rather useless for our endemic insects.

Anthophora sp. female at Penstemon flowers, their specialty. Photo Terry Stone

Anthophora sp. males visit the flowers rarely, and always early in the morning

In our backyard the exotics are mixed with locals like Penstemon, Brittle Bush and Creosote Bushes that are all in full bloom too. Each species is visited by a distinctly different group of endemic bees and flies.

Only Honey Bees go wherever they find pollen and nectar. They are imported from Europe and the Middle East, also from Africa, so no wonder that they like Aloes flowers

Andrena male (right) approaching a presumed female

On the yellow Brittle Bush discs, several species in the mining bee genus Andrena are extremely active. They were  nearly completely missing last year after a severe freeze in late February. I am not saying that the bees had not survived, but their usual synchronization with the Brittle Bush bloom was totally off. Instead, last year we saw an abundance of Sand Wasps, that are usually much rarer.

Sand Wasp Steniolia sp.

 After this very warm winter the Andernas are back in their usual high numbers. Especially the males contribute to the buzz around the bushes. They try to mate with everything of the right size. Pairs in copula are nearly impossible to photograph because most mating attempts end in an undignified tumble off the flower.

mating Andrena pair

Mating flies are much easier to capture, even though the next example is a tiny fruit fly. There are several species in this group, like the Sunflower Seed Maggot Fly, that lay their eggs into the developing seeds of composite flowers.

Euarestoides acutangulus

Several species in the syrphid genus Copestylum were feeding on  Brittle Bush nectar, among them the huge Mexican Cactus Fly that is a convincing Carpenter Bee mimic.

Palpada furcata,                   Copestylum mexicanum (Mexican Cactus Fly),                     Eristalis sp.

 Most Copestylum species in Arizona lay their eggs in dead or injured cacti so their huge maggots can develop in the unlimited resources of for example a decaying saguaro.

Copestylum avidum

 The pair in the photo was actually flying around together and probably wasn't planning to use the perfectly healthy little Christmas Cholla as a larval host. 

Eupeodes volucris (Bird Hover Fly)

Here is another syrphid fly. While the adults of Eupeodes volucris also like nectar, they are also drawn by aphid populations on the flower stems. Aphids are the main food of the larvae.

Nomada sp

Any place where many insects that collect and store food for their offspring regularly appear, like here Mining and Honey Bees, attracts also brood predators that want their kids to go along for the ride. These may lay eggs on the flowers or on captured males or females of the target species, or the parasite follows them home to then throws her own eggs into the open nest entrance. They are often related bees like the Nomada species above (Cleptoparasites of Andrena and others).

Eupompha elegans

Lytta auriculata (Red-eared Blister Beetle)

Blister beetles also lay their eggs on the underside of flowers hoping that their hatchling larvae will find their way into a bee's nest by hitching a ride on a flower-visiting adult. Lytta auriculata showed up for the first time on our Brittle Bush.

Anthrax vierecki

Hemipenthes sp.

Bee fly females can often be seen hovering over the entrance of a ground bee nest, tossing their eggs into it in a characteristic forward thrust.

Mecaphesa sp. Flower Crab Spider

Of course the flower visitors are also assaulted by a number of direct predators that are waiting close to the nectar sources. I would have completely overlooked the flower crab spider in its camouflage if I hadn't seen the contrasting spec of its prey.

Zelus renardii (Leafhopper Assassin Bug)

Ambush bugs may be much better hidden on flowers by color and shape than this assassin bug Zelus renardii, but her leafgreen color and stealthy approach give her a wider hunting range.

So I am looking forward to our Brittle Bush bloom every spring, and I don't mind at all that we find more young plants every year. They only grow on the artificial patio elevation anyway, I suspect that the caliche layer under the undisturbed soil does not agree with them. They pretty much dry up during between April and mid July and come alive again during the monsoon.

By the time the Brittle Bush flowers are drying up and the gold finches are beginning to investigate them for seeds, the first cacti are blooming, usually Beavertail Prickly Pear and Arizona Hedgehog.

Augochlorella sp. on
Echinocereus pentalophus

But this year the Lady Finger Cactus (Echinocereus pentalophus) has beaten them by a couple of days. Little green sweat bees, Augochlorella sp. are buzzing the flowers

 Even after the flowers are all wilted, Brittle Bush still offers something to the local bee population: Megachile Leafcutter Bees are cutting the tapestry for their nest chambers from the leafs.

Our Dark-morph Red Tail Hawk is breeding again

She's back! The dark-morph Red Tail Hawk  is on her old nest again. I introduced in this blog in 2011 Every year since then she  successfully raised a brood in one of two saguaro nests in the state trust land next to our property. Usually she alternates between the nests. But in January 2014 I found some green boughs of creosote and mistletoe hanging from the nest she used in 2013, indicating activity. I also watched the distinctive dark hawk defend her territory against a visiting Harris Hawk. But that chase took her way south into Picture Rocks, miles from the old location, so I thought she might have moved? Three weeks ago, a very light hawk took off from the saguaro nest. Now I think that that was her mate, so they were already incubating. Hawks start that process after the first egg is laid, while some other birds, especially our Gamble's Quail in the chicken family, wait until the clutch is complete before the female sits down to incubate. Two different strategies: raptor chick hatch in sequence. That spreads the risk and allows the parents in bad times to concentrate on raising only the bigger first born(s). The precocious quail babies all have to be ready to leave the nest together, so they need to hatch simultaneously.

Raptors should not be disturbed when they sit on eggs because they may leave them. They are much more devoted to the hatched chicks and not as easily discouraged at that later time. So we waited until today with our next visit.
We stayed so far away that even with binoculars  I couldn't tell whether there was a bird on the nest. I took some photos anyway and could then see in the blown up image that it is the dark female again! But even though I was at least 500 meters from the nest and in the cover of a wash she still took offense and flew up. But she did not leave the area.

Landing on a near by saguaro she scolded and screamed and then took to the air to follow my retreat closely, and Randy thought he saw the male high above in the sky. I did not get to peak at the nestlings. The dark female has always been extremely protective, and she really doesn't like human visitors. So no wonder that her nest is nearly exactly in the middle between the road, the quarry, and our land, as far as possible from each location. We will leave her alone again, most of the time. I wish her success and another pair of healthy chicks!     

On March 27th for the first time both hawks were in the air. The male is light with a dark head. They flew over to scream at us but then returned to  hunting over the Twin Peak. Nestlings were still not visible, but at least one was chirping loudly.

April 3, fist peak at a chick. He was already busy rearranging twigs of the nest. Looking healthy. From the whitewash under the nest, I'd say there are at least 2 chicks. But who knows.

We also watched a shrike scaring a pair of Gnat Catchers, White-throated Swifts harassing the male Red Tail, and found that our rodeo-riding neighbor brought new cattle to the state land.

April 15, The chick is much bigger, but is he an only one? I can't tell, and mom is screaming madly at me, coming all the way from the Twin Peak to scold me.

April 21, The contour feathers are there. I still haven't seen more than one chick, but our friend Frank stayed a little longer and got rewarded with a peak at a second chick.

 

5/6/2014 Saguaro blossoms sprouting around the nest and the chicks are getting big. One is always staying low, but I have seen his head. Mom was agitated this morning and kept swooping up at eye level, then landing on a saguaro close by. Cactus flowers can support the weight of a hawk!

 5/12/2014 The nest is empty and at least one chick is perched about a third of a mile east of the nest, closely guarded by his dark mother who is more protective than ever. Good luck!

  For more photos of this last visit to our hawks in 2014 click here!

 Cody and I walked over on 5/13/2014 for a last visit (two years ago a pair of youngsters kept coming back to sleep in or close to the nest). But the nest (in the right saguaro) was empty. Mom still felt she had to come over and scold us, either out of habit or because the youngsters were hidden close by.

Weekend!

Unexpected and frankly uninvited breakfast visitors dropping in literally from the sky. Turns out the pilot is an old acquaintance but the landing in our backyard was not at all planned.

The monster gets packed up, but by now my coffee is cold and I'm late for my show in SaddleBrook - luckily we set up yesterday and all I'll have to do is open my tent - after getting there, it takes about an hour.

A pretty little show with pleasant neighbors and appreciative customers. The guy across from me  sells ocarinas and plants ear-worms into my head (does one say that in English? In German Ohrwuermer are songs that you can't get rid of anymore). Great discussion with a customer: So sad that rattlers now loose their rattles (she meant the behavior, not the body part). I: that's a myth. She: but it's in National Geographics! She leaves with her faith in our rattlers restored and her believe in everything printed shaken.

After closing the show for today, a photo stop at Catalina State Park to take the first reference photos for a painting of Push Ridge that a customer is interested in. There will be plain air sketches and visits under different light conditions before the final painting can be tackled.

By the time I cross the Tucson Mountains into Saguaro National Park on my way home, the sun is setting. Feierabend! (look it up. It's one of the most useful German words)

Not quite. At home the phone is ringing. A customer has decided (and gotten the OK from his wife) that he wants a big framed print of my team of Belgians. We discuss price, framing, the fact that there will be tax.... non-glare glass, a different mat....great, another sale! Now the printer is running, the double mat drying (they get glued together so the cuts stay lined up perfectly)....

I thought the pizza was cooking in the meantime, but it turns out that I had put all the ingredients on the pie, and turned on the oven, but never put the pizza in....Oh, well, that happens, but by now it starts to smell delicious.
Now I only have to cut the inner mat, mount the print, remember to sign it, frame it.... take it to the show tomorrow, and convince the customers that it really needs a companion piece ... well, at least I will take a matching frame with me.

Oh, and now eat the pizza and watch a movie, Randy just showed me our choices, I think we should go for ...I think I will sleep well through whatever we pick.  

A pretty normal Saturday.

The Vector Bird: Phainopepla nitens

I smelled a  nearly sickly sweet fragrance and heard lots of bees buzzing. Not equipped with the  superior senses of an insect I had a hard time finding the source of the smell. No blooming citrus tree and way too early for the Queen of the Night. No visible flowers at all. So I followed a bee. It took me to a juicy green clump of desert mistletoe in an otherwise rather bare mesquite tree. Of course! The parasitic Desert Mistletoe Phoradendron californicum has to produce its tiny green flowers before the host tree leafs out and makes it invisible.

Desert Mistletoe flowers make up for their lack of visual appeal by sending out a very strong olfactory signal. The flowers were crawling with Africanized Honey Bees, several species of syrphids, and other flies. So obviously, both pollen and nectar were offered.

Syrphid Fly nectaring and Honeybee collecting pollen 

Other mistletoe clumps in the vicinity were already several step ahead in the propagation cycle: ripening berries were changing from a whitish green color into a reddish blush: the next participant in the drama is a bird, and birds need optical clues.

Ripe Berries of Desert Mistletoe

Sure enough, our main mistletoe-berry eaters, the Phainopeplas had come back to the desert a while ago and the shiny black males were claiming mistletoe-carrying trees as their territories. Phainopeplas belong to the Silky Flycatchers, but like their relatives, the waxwings, they rely on berries as a major part of their diet. During his territorial  display however, the singing male sits on an exposed branch, flying up periodically, flashing the white spots in his wings, and landing on his perch again. These motions are quite similar to the behavior of an insect-hunting flycatcher.

A Phainopepla male has claimed an Ironwood tree with a big mistletoe plant

Claiming and defending a territory in the Sonoran Desert flatland is part of the double life that these birds lead. They raise an early brood here in spring, in a solitary nest close to big mistletoe bunches with ripening berries. When this food source is exhausted and the desert becomes hot and inhospitable, The phainopeplas move on to cooler mountainous and riparian habitats where they raise a second brood on a more mixed diet consisting of berries and insects, this time as peaceful colony breeders with several nests per tree.  

in early April these fledgelings are ready to move to the mountains

But while in the desert, Phainopleplas are the main vector species for the parasitic desert mistletoe, meaning they are responsible for the distribution of the seeds to new host trees. Each mistletoe berry contains several large seeds. Like many seeds, they pass the digestive system of birds unharmed, maybe even stimulated to germinate.

piling all the seeds on one branch seems not be so good for dispersal of the parasite. Photo Ned Harris

A single Phainopepla eats over 1000 mistletoe berries per day. Since the bird usually perches in the upper branches of trees, it is likely that most of its droppings will land on lower branches. The seeds themselves are equipped with a layer of a very sticky glue (?) ensuring that they will stay in place on the bark. Not even our rare rains can dislodge them.

Seeds from a bird dropping on a mesquite branch. Notice the little red roots

Very quickly each seeds sends out a root that searches for a crack in the bark to enter the trees tissue. The root tip divides into several 'suckers' that may produce chemicals to fool the cells of the tree to allow them to insert themselves without rejection. Many parasites use some kind of chemical mimicry. The suckers will eventually find the cambium of the tree and tap into the xylem, the water transport system. The tree will then provide the mistletoe with water and the essential trace elements that are carried with the water from the soil. Desert mistletoe resides nearly exclusively on leguminous trees (Palo Verde, Ironwood, Mesquite, Acacia) so it has also access to organically bound nitrates provided to the trees by their symbiotic root bacteria. Mistletoe leaves are reduced to scales but its branches are green and chlorophyll-loaded. So they are able to photosynthesize all the sugar the plant needs. Mistletoe does not tap into the trees sugar transport lines, the phloem. This type of parasitism is called hemi (half) parasitism or partial parasitism.  

A Foothills Paloverde carrying a big mistletoe plant. Note that the branches above the parasite are mostly dead. But this is not the usual scenario.

Parasites ideally do not kill their hosts. To do so would kill the parasite as well. But besides the water and nutrient drain, the multitude of drooping mistletoe branches that are up 1 meter long place a heavy burden on our small desert trees. After the frequent strong windstorms I often find branches with mistletoe that have been torn off the trees. Of course, Palo Verde trees are supposedly able to shed branches under adverse conditions to be able to survive. But to me those dying branches seem to indicate the impending death of the tree within the next couple of years.

Most old Ironwood trees are crippled and contorted with huge tumor like growths. The tumors seem to originate around old mistletoe infestations. I cannot say whether the mistletoe itself causes the tree to produce these growths, or if the trees are trying to encapsulate the parasite, or if the parasite has caused a secondary infection by giving tumor inducing bacteria an entrance point. At any rate, the tumors usually seem to start as 'brooms' which appear when all the sleeping eyes of a branch begin to grow in an unregulated fashion. Mistletoe is usually mixed in with these trees branches.

'Broom' tumor on Ironwood. These usually contain mistletoe as well as Ironwood sprouts

Under the current conditions of continued drought many heavily mistletoe-infested trees will die. More than ever, water is the limiting factor in the desert, and water is what this partial parasite is sucking from the trees. But as usual, their is not only one reason for the decline. In our local case the quarry tailings in the background have contributed to a change in the watertable and the run-off from the mountains. Even though our desert trees are among the record holders in root length, old trees along washes that no longer run cannot adjust to those changes.

While I don't believe that mistletoe in natural areas should be managed (as many visitors to our parks request), on our own land where we enjoy a very limited number of old, big desert trees, we try to break the mistletoe bushes off the host plants every couple of years.

Seeds on a fence post

But we do not cut off the infested branches, and thus the parasites often grow back. We are just hoping to somewhat reduce the seed production and the spread to other trees. But we are also surrounded by state land with healthy mistletoe and phainopepla populations, so right now seeds are not only germinating on tree branches but also on my car, in our window screens, on the roof, on fence posts ...

ps: I am surprised how few mistletoe plants are infesting the leguminous trees around Sweetwater in Tucson and the ponds around the Gilbert Water Ranch. While the banks are covered in mesquite and Palo Verdes grow along the paths, we found neither mistletoe nor Phainopeplas during our last visits.

pps: there will be a lecture about this topic at the Santa Rita Experimental Range this Saturday:

Discovery Saturday Illustrated Talks:

'Dung-on-a-twig': mistletoe studies at SRER are teaching us about ecology, evolution, and vector-borne diseases

·         WHEN: Saturday February 8, 2014, 9:30 – 11 AM, followed by a potluck lunch

·         WHERE: Florida Station, SRER headquarters, Classroom – Discovery Center

·         WHO: Jennifer Koop, & Nicolas Alexandre, University of Arizona, Department of Ecology and   Evolutionary Biology

Too bad that I have an art show in SaddleBrook this weekend and cannot go!

Gilbert Water Ranch January 2014

My friend Carol and I used another beautiful, sunny Arizona winter day for a visit to a series of recharge ponds in Gilbert close to Phoenix. I think Carol was a little disappointed how crowded the park was with dog walkers, noisy kids and people yelling into their cell phones. No, wait that last one is my own peeve. But the birds were there, even if some species that I was expecting were hiding Love Birds and Osprey) or hadn't arrived this year (phaleropes), and the light was gorgeous after we finally got the sun behind us.

Black-necked stilts dominated the flat areas, some Avocets mingled with them.

 Pin-tails and Green-winged Teals populated the only partly flooded fields.

There were more Canada Geese than we had ever seen anywhere in Arizona.

The Kestrel pair was in hot pursuit of a Cooper's Hawk.

I finally saw a nice group of Inca Doves again, in Tucson I am experiencing Inca-withdrawal.

Blue Herons were resting on the artificial platforms, Great Egrets and  Snowy Egrets were showing off  their wispy breeding  plumage.
We enjoyed seeing Ring-necked Ducks dive into the depth of the deepest pond and pulled out Sibley's to find out that a group of females that stayed apart were Scoups, not Ring-necks.

I was using my little Canon that hasn't seen a lot of action yet. I am happy with the image quality  when the lens was extended lens and also when I was shooting into the water without a pol filter. The coots feet here are submersed.

The introduced Sliders were a lot of fun even though it's a real shame that people just drop them in the wild when they outgrow the cute faze. Obviously no problem for the sliders, but the local ecosystem may suffer from it.

 Not to forget the mammals: Cotton Rats and Bunnies were rather used to the milling humans but we missed the famously tame coyote.

 The only photogenic insects were Variegated Meadowhawks that showed up as soon as it got nice and warm.

The first Rattler of 2014

On January 26th, I found my first active (sort of) rattler of the year at the Santa Cruz River Path in Marana, Pima Co Arizona, USA.

When I was walking my 4 dogs, camera and binoculars around my neck, a lady informed me of a run-over little snake just ahead. I said: 'run-over on this path, what a pity'. She responded 'I'm only telling you so your dogs won't freak out.' When we found the little rattler it was stretched out and quite stiff, but seemed unharmed. He was obviously cold and trying to warm up on the sunny pavement. Only a little over one foot long he had already accumulated several rattle elements. By the way, it's a myth that one can tell the snake's age in years by the number of those.  After a little coaxing with a piece of straw the rattler woke up, buzzed indignantly, and moved out of the bike path. My 4 dogs were staring at him with too much interest and too little fear for my taste.

Check out how his winter weight-loss shows at his tail-end: his skin is throwing two big folds there. 

When I posted the story on fb, someone remarked that this might be a Mojave Rattler, and I think that is possible. Going back through my earlier slides, I found that there were always a few among all the Diamondbacks that I photographed. It's not too difficult to tell them apart conclusively, but you have to take a closer look at them than I sometimes do. Here is a link to a blog written when I did.

On the same walk we saw two Northern Harriers, both gold-brown, a Red-tail, a Cooper's, the territorial Kestrel, a group of Lawrences's Goldfinches,  a Belted Kingfisher, several Abert's Towhees, some Mallards, and flying overhead, two clouds of thousands of birds. The first cloud consisted of sparrow sized birds and I couldn't tell what they were, the second was made up of Blackbirds, mostly yellow-headed, and grackles.A lonely Monarch was fluttering among the willows along the river.