It’s definitely feeling spring-like these days. There were many more flowers blooming yesterday (including trillium, camas, and shooting star), and I saw three interesting insects on Oregon grape.
Above is an Andrena genus bee with impressive pollen pants. And yes, entomologists really call them that, when bees pack pollen onto the hairs on their back legs. The bees in this genus are also called “mining” bees, because the solitary females make nests in the ground. They’re among the earliest bees to emerge in the spring.
I’ve featured honeysuckle sawflies before, but this was the first one I’ve seen this year, and I think they’re fantastic. Abia americana are the only Abia species of honeysuckle sawfly found in the western U.S. This one was intently feeding on the pollen of the Oregon grape. I love the clubbed antennae, and the coppery abdomen. I hadn’t noticed the yellow lower legs before, but they blend in quite well with the flower.
I wish I had a better photo for this last Oregon grape visitor. At first, I thought it was a piece of forest debris, then I thought it was a tiny moth, which is a decent guess, even at this magnification. But it’s a fly in the Psychodidae family. These “moth flies” are also known as drain flies, and you may have seen them in bathrooms or showers. But there are many more species (and genera) that live in the wild, including this one, which has a nice pattern on its fluffy wings. It moved across the leaf strangely, with its wings hunched up over its head.
I actually saw several (two or three) of these flies on the same clump of Oregon grape. And although I checked a dozen more clumps on my way back to the parking lot, I didn’t see any more moth flies. Maybe it was because the area where they were was more shaded and damp, which Psychodidae prefer, but for whatever reason, that particular location suited them. It’s astounding, and interesting, how micro a micro-habitat can be sometimes.
Enjoy the emerging spring life!
Ticklehead 