Is that bee alive? No, dinner

We were doing our usual walk around the block last night, and looking for bats above, and bees, hanging onto lavendar, below. I stopped to inspect one of the bees, when Jennifer asked "Hey, I think that bee's dead."

No, just sleeping.

No, dead, she responds. That spider (green small one, that lives on butterfly bushes) just crawled away from it.

So I poked it and sure enough. Dead, and dry. I found this blog (which is very cool, all about bugs) and decided it's a green lynx spider (go down to the Sept. 2007 post). Funny,the guy was asking about what the spider was that had just munched down a bee in front of him. Apparently the spider gets its name from pouncing on its prey like a cat.

Bushtits and bumble bees

I was looking at a flock of bushtits swarming over my suet feeder last night, hanging outside of my kitchen window, and lo, came across this article today in the Tacoma News Tribune.

Apparently, once they start swarming around the feeders, the kids are gone.

Also last night, and the night before, I was walking our dog, late, around Scenic Hill, and always enjoy passing by this one yard on Hemlock, which has said to hell with the lawn, and just started planting flowers everywhere. She's planted about five lavender plants, which have bushed out and attracted mucho bees. It was late one night, about 9 pm, when my fat, hairy dog can actually enjoy a walk, and there were the bushes, scenting the air with lavender, and as I looked closer, I realized that about half a dozen bumbles had decided to spend the night.

In casting around on why this was happening, I came across this cool web site about, lavender and bees, I guess, as well as general nature studies. I used one of her pictures, as you see, and I plan to take my own tonight.

More bees

As I was visiting my mom in Everett this weekend, I was looking up at the beams over her front porch, and noticed one bubble bee. Then about 5, all coming out of one hole drilled into her siding up there.

Great. I told her, yeah, she should have it looked into, although the bubbles seem to be going right to her rhodies on the side. Is there any way of removing these bees without killing them?

This picture was taken in Washington DC by the by, by an associated press photog. I took it off the PI's website.

Pollinators, what are you going to do about them?

Especially when they've decided to take up housekeeping inside your home, or more precisely, in two boards on the siding beside our garage door.

They are mason bees, but frankly, given the crashing of the bee population, I"ll take any pollinator I can get. We are wondering that if we put a mason bee home nearby, and add some smoke, if they'll go to their new home and won't attack us in the process.

I don't want to kill them. When we've tried to recalk over the winter, they just chewed new openings and moved into the same panels .Smart bees. The bubbles meanwhile, have returned to my rosemary out front, as well as the comfrey, damn plant - it even bullies the blackberries to a draw - and the roses (a tea hybrid that hasn't had all the smell bred out of it.)

And real life honeybees, tho I'm not sure where they are coming from. I even hesitate to swat a wasp at this point.But what to do about the mason bees?

Baldies, Bunnies and Bumbles

In reverse order.

As I'm watching it snow tonight, and rejoicing I'm finally seeing some of this white stuff, my daughter reminds me that this may mean the end of the bubble bees I saw earlier this week.

"See mom, it probably killed the bumble bees! Now how do you feel about it!" end quote.

Okay, if it killed the bumbles, I hate the snow. (well, sort of.) - she just read this last comment and slugged me.

Could this be another local hit on the wildlife due to global warming (in reverse)? (I took this picture of a bumble napping in a daffodil the day before this snow)

On to baldies. My hubby saw a bald eagle near the wildlife area off of the East Valley Highway near the rock shop.

And finally bunnies. It was about this time a few years ago that the neighborhood cat was stalking something. And that something was screaming, literally. So I went over to investigate. It was a terrified baby rabbit that Fat Millie (the cat) hat trapped against a azalea bush. We rescued the bunny, which Jennifer wanted to make a pet.

But we convinced her said bunny probably wouldn't survive and to release it with its fellow bunnies in the Scenic Hill Cemetery, which we did. Now I doubt this species of rabbit is endangered, but there are some, oddly, which are stuggling for survival according to this article, and this one. (which is about the pygmy rabbits in Spokane.)