No tourists were harmed in the making of this video

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 We, or rather our dogs, are finding several rattlers a day now. Check out the videos on flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/margarethebrummermann/5643727609/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/margarethebrummermann/5644161230/in/photostream/

But watch in full screen mode and turn on the sound!

A vey localized population explosion of Eupompha elegans

Around Tucson, we didn't get many Blister Beetles (Meloidae) this spring. They feed on flowers like lupines and desert chicory, but these annuals simply didn't bloom this year. Even the perennial Brittle Bush, Encelia farinosa took the year off in most places. But the bushes on our patio, protected from the worst of the February freeze and slightly irrigated year round, were covered in flowers and all insects put on a great show.

Eupompha elegans usually appears in March and nibbles on the flowers of all available Asteracrae. It's a pretty beetle and I'm always happy to see a few.

This year we experienced one of the very localized population explosions that are so typical for Meloids. There wasn't a single Encelia disc that wasn't occupied by one or two of the beetles in our backyard. While I took picture they landed on my arms, in my hair, in my face - not too pleasant considering they are blister beetles. But I didn't squish any and they didn't give me any blisters. They just munched yellow Encelia leafs, mated and left orange spots behind wherever they landed. At the beginning of April the beetles vanished when the last Encelia flowers wilted.

 

I didn't find any Eupompha elegans outside our little Brittle Bush patch, not even in Sabino Canyon. My friend Robyn Waayers posted one from California, and hers is of a different subspecies that does not show the red banding that is so typical for our subspecies Eupompha elegans perpulchra (the elegant and especially beautiful Eupomphas)

E. elegans elegans from Borrego Springs (Photo R. Waayers)

It's a Wasp, it's a bee, it's a fly, it's Ripiphorus vierecki!

The campus of the University of Arizona is very poor of native plants. This is difficult to understand given the very interesting and enduring plants that are available for gardening in our desert environment.  The U of A should be a trendsetter in the field of water conservation and xeroscaping, but instead there are beds of petunias....

But a few Desert Marigolds (Baileya multiradiata) escaped the gardeners' scrutiny and keep reseeding themselves in little patches around Old Main. Yesterday on my way to lunch, I was looking there for bees to photograph.

While zooming in on some nectaring Leaf-cutter Bee, I noticed another insect that  resembled the  bees in shape and size, but was hovering and bobbing up and down nearly in the fashion of a bee-fly.

Ripiphorus vierecki female

It didn't seem to be interested in the yellow discs of the blooming daisies. It approached instead everything that looked like a flower bud, including dried up old stalks. Then I caught a glimps of fanned antennae. Greek rhipis (ριπις) 'fan' + phor (φορα) 'bearing':  Eureka, a  Ripiphorus! (since my knowledge of Arizona beetle species is far better than my Greek,  the revelations arrived the other way round. So, scratch the 'Eureka!') But anyway, this does not belong to hymenoptera or diptera, but to coleoptera, this is a real beetle.  Ripiphorus vierecki is the species most commonly observed in the Tucson area.

I caught the beetle and took it back to the department, where the entomologists were dutifully impressed, but everybody else said 'yes, I see those all the time'. Hmm.

I did see a couple more Ripiphorus on my second attempt to get lunch, so I went on a diet for the day, and then I found another three on my way home on a patch of Desert Marigold on the west side of the Tucson Mountains. All were clinging to unopened buds. I looked again the next day, but all the flowers were blooming by then and there were no beetles, just bees.

There is a good reason for this. All the beetles I saw were females, ready to lay their eggs.  I the picture above the ovipositor is visible under the beetle. She is going to plunge it into the unopened Marigold bud and deposit her eggs just in time for the larvae to hatch when the composite flower opens. At this time bees will visit the fresh flowers, and the beetle larvae will hitch a ride to the bee's nest where they will live first as internal, later as external parasites of the bee larvae (Nomia, Diadesia and other spp.)

Male R. vierecki, Photo Greg Corman, Tucson

 Ripiphorus males have bigger antennae than the females, indicating that they find the females by sensing their pheromones. They have a very short lifespan and usually don't show up on flowers but instead frequent the nesting site of the host, waiting for emerging females. I had to borrow this photo from Bug Guide (Creative Commons G. Corman).


Literature: The Rhipiphoridae of California (Coleptera)
By E.G. Linsley & J.W. MacSwain
Bull. Calif. Insect Surv. 1(3): 79-88, 1951
Cite: 360547

Orioles and April Rain

Costa's Hummingbird

Yesterday we got some much needed rain. Not just a short April shower, but long lasting 'female' rain as native Arizonans call the gentle, productive winter drizzle. Thunderous summer monsoon showers are called male rain.

Early during our breakfast all birds bravely kept feeding.

Female Oriole

But they began to look wet and disheveled, smeared with clumpy, sticky pollen. They didn't seem to enjoy the weather very much. When it is cold - yesterday we were in the high forties - most birds, like mammals, keep their body temperature up by shivering, and that costs energy. Only a few, among them hummers and swifts, can let their core temperature drop and go into torpor like lizards, but his happens usually only at night at even lower temps.

Bullock's Oriole

After breakfast on the patio we went inside to 'do our taxes'. It's that time of the year. So the roofed patio was left to the birds. Hummers were already hiding under the eves - no great photo op there. But:

An old cholla skeleton used to support a Mandevilla that didn't make it through the February freeze. It soon looked like a traditional Easter Tree, all decorated with Orioles instead of Easter Eggs.

 

 To my surprise Hooded and Bullock's Oriole males peacefully shared the cover. Usually they are very territorial and the Hooded succeeds in chasing the Bullock's out.  

 Obviously, he didn't feel up to it in that weather and concentrated on staying warm. Or does misery really like company?

Even though I'm aware of northern species of the genus, Orioles always strike me as visitors from a lusher, tropical world with sweet fruit and perennial sunshine. Our birds seem to agree with me.

I have no idea to which species of Oriole the female belonged. She didn't show any interest in either male.

Our Cactus Wrens always populate the patio,  sharing it with us and 5 big dogs. They even go through the pages of our newspaper on the table. But this guy looks wet and miserable, too.

Update: today it's sunny, but chilly with frost on the roof, and the Orioles are happily mobbing each other with angry keck-keck-krrreck calls.

True Bugs on Cactus

True bugs suck!

There are times in Arizona's Sonoran Desert when cacti and agaves are about the only juicy things for a bug to suck on. Cactus specialists among the hemipterans can be found during all seasons, even reproducing in the middle of winter.

The species of the coreid (leaf-footed bug) genus Narnia specialize on different cacti. Some of them can be found on Prickly Pear, another that seems to be undescribed so far, prefers Saguaros.

 

Several species, like for example Narnia wilsoni spend their lives under the formidable protection of the thorns of the Fish-hook Barrel Cactus. The freshly hatched first instar nymphs above are enjoying the juicy film that covers the fresh seeds after a squirrel broke into the fruit. 

 

 

Of course, no protection is absolute: This older nymph, still red (teneral) and soft after its last molt before reaching adulthood, fell victim to a jumping spider. You can see the exuvia (shed skin) at the top left and a string of new eggs on the thorn on the right. So I guess this rare species will survive here in our backyard.

Adult Narnia wilsoni

N. wilsoni adults are quite attractive. Most others in the genus Narnia are drab and hard to tell apart. And who knows whether the species is really so rare. Hidden deeply between the ribs of the barrel cactus these guys are very hard to spot.

Two more coreid species Chelinidea vittiger and C. hunteri also frequent our succulents. Their contrasting wing vein pattern and subtile coloring remind me of my grandmother's Art Deco jewlery.

The nymphs with their thick antennae seem more in the style of children's plastic toys. Parental guarding is common in these bugs.

A couple of days ago I found the odd looking Merocoris sp., also a Coreid, on an Engleman's Prickly Pear in our back yard. It can't be an obligatory cactus feeder, because it also occurs in the Sonoita Grasslands where there is hardly any cactus. But it was definitely sucking from the succulent little leaf remenant on the Opuntia bud.

Despite their plump shape and suggestively big hind thighs, these coreids are no jumpers, but they can fly.

Merocoris sp.

Some Stinkbugs or Pentatomids also have cactus as a preferred host plant, like these Chlorochroa opuntiae. The  little congregtion below was photographed in September 2010 in the Saguaro Monument West in the Tucson Mountains. The individual below was feeding on a Cane Cholla in our backyard (bajada of the same mountains) on March 29, 2011.

Chlorochroa opuntiae

Zelus renardii, Leafhopper, Assassin Bug

Growing cacti release sugary juices from extra-floral nectaries and just growing  pads and flower buds.  A predatory bug, a reduviid in the genus Zelus, is stalking  insects that can't resist the sweet attraction.  

Small Milkweed Bugs Lygaeus kalmii

These Small Milkweed Bugs  in the Seed Bug family will most likely not lay their eggs on the agave leaf that they chose as a mating place, but the closest relative to milkweed in our backyard are some Oleanders that survived the 'renatification' of our property.

Sabino Canyon in April

"Sabino Canyon is fun!"

Yesterday, Ned Harris invited me to join his 'Friends of Sabino Canyon' for one of their weekly spring walks. The morning was beautiful, cloudy, but not windy... just perfect. Notably missing were flowers. No spring annuals and nearly no brittle bush bloom this year. But lots of small critters and birds were out.

 Round-tailed Squirrel

Sonoran Whiptail Lizard

Young Desert Spiny Lizard

Clark's Spiny Lizard

Female Side-blotched lizard

We also saw Greater Earless, Zebratail, Side-blotched, and Ornate Tree Lizards. The canyon has a lot of diversity because it covers very different habitats and elevations. Some of the lizard species are confined to certain areas. Knowing what to expect where can be a great help to identify them.

Black-chinned Hummingbird at Ocotillo flowers

This is from the visitor center in the open desert area. TheBlack Chins shared the ocotillo with Ana's. In the riparian part of the canyon we encountered also Costa's and mostly Broadbills.

Pyrrhuloxia and Northern Cardinal were waiting for hand-outs at the tram station kiosk.

Pyrrhuloxia female

Cactus Wren

The Roadrunner was making barking noises that confuse even the experienced birders. We also heard the song of many territorial males of Lucy's Warbler. 

All Black-throated Sparrows were paired and nesting. Turkey Vutures were circling, also Redtailed Hawks, and Cooper's were calling among their nesting trees. Of course, lots of  Phainopeplas planting mistletoe.

But I went to look for insects. Surprisingly few Grasshoppers, so I photographed our most common one, the Pallid-winged banded Grasshopper.

Metallic green Sweat Bees enjoying Ocotillo pollen. They were joined by huge Carpenter Bees, their mimics the Mexican Cactus Fly and even a couple of Tarantula Hawks.

Along the creek, and especially in the area of the dam, we always find the best insects. This time, Fred Heath discovered the big, colorful Soldier Fly, and I found a very modest looking Tipulid, that Carl Olson declared 'very cool!'

Soldier Fly

Limoniid Cranefly

Haplorhynchites planifrons

This beetle is a  primitive weevil that returns every year to blooming Brittle Bush in Sabino Canyon. This year, there was only one - there was just one blooming Brittle Bush.  

Three different insect orders on one little Fleebane disc: To beeflies, a little wasp and the mating Metallic Wood-boring Beetles (Buprestids) Acmaeodera sphaeralceae.