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Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: PeterB
Date: August 04, 2022 12:00PM
Hi everyone,

I have some particular bees that seem to love the basil in my backyard. I'm pretty sure one is just a regular bumblebee (and I do occasionally get honeybees), but there's something else that's showing up that I've never seen before... basically all-black, apologies for the quality of photos, but these guys are really hard to get good photos of, because they move so damned fast.

Also, from a few months ago, a bird on my fence, I'm pretty sure is an immature cardinal...? He or she was seemingly getting fed by an adult male, which I thought was pretty weird, because I thought that they only did that with their mates when out of the nest, and I'm also pretty sure that the male's adult female mate was nearby while this bird was around. Again, hard to get good photos because I didn't want to frighten them off.

[imgur.com]
(I would post the photos individually, but too much work to copy and paste all the links...)



Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)
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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: Ombligo
Date: August 04, 2022 12:16PM
looks like it could be an eastern carpenter bee.


“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias
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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: DeusxMac
Date: August 04, 2022 12:19PM
i believe the bird is a female Northern Cardinal.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2022 12:22PM by DeusxMac.
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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: PeterB
Date: August 04, 2022 12:25PM
Quote
Ombligo
looks like it could be an eastern carpenter bee.

For the one I'm saying is a bumblebee, maybe... but not for the all-black one.

Quote
DeusxMac
i believe the bird is a female Northern Cardinal.


I would have thought so too, except that the bill wasn't the right color, nor was there much color to the plumage (as you can see from the photos)... plus the fact that I'm pretty sure the male's mate was right nearby, and I think cardinals are monogamous?



Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)
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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: btfc
Date: August 04, 2022 12:44PM
Eastern Blurry Bee smiling smiley


Carpenter bee is my thought too.
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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: DeusxMac
Date: August 04, 2022 12:50PM
Quote
PeterB
Quote
DeusxMac
i believe the bird is a female Northern Cardinal.


I would have thought so too, except that the bill wasn't the right color, nor was there much color to the plumage (as you can see from the photos)... plus the fact that I'm pretty sure the male's mate was right nearby, and I think cardinals are monogamous?

You have to expect some color variations bird-to-bird (your photo looks pretty washed out on my screen, so can't really see the colors very well).
Also yours could be a younger female.



Take a look at the variations of young female cardinals here:
[duckduckgo.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2022 12:52PM by DeusxMac.
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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: PeterB
Date: August 04, 2022 01:00PM
Yes, I can say the color on my photo is pretty accurate -- really a taupe-grey throughout, maybe with slight hints of red but not like what you see on the bill of a female. So that's why I'm thinking juvenile.

The bees ... now I'm a bit confused, because looking at pics of carpenter bees, they can be all black or have white or yellow on them. The ones I were seeing were definitely all black ... I forgot to mention that there were quite a few of them, whereas the one I think is a bumblebee (the yellow/black one), there was only one of those. I also noticed that the all-black ones were also interested in my purple salvia, but nowhere near so much as the basil.



Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)
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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: NewtonMP2100
Date: August 04, 2022 01:25PM
....I like to.....do it......


_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!
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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: ztirffritz
Date: August 04, 2022 02:57PM
Mason Bee?

[crownbees.com]




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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: PeterB
Date: August 04, 2022 03:06PM
Quote
ztirffritz
Mason Bee?

[crownbees.com]


Could very well be! grinning smiley

... I'm wondering if there's some way I can get better photos. I was just using my SX50 on Auto mode, because I've never quite gotten the hang of how to use it in Macro mode... but these guys just move way too fast.



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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: mrlynn
Date: August 04, 2022 06:11PM
Young of many birds, including cardinals, will still hang around their parents with open mouths and wing-flapping, hoping for a free meal. Parents sometimes indulge.

/Mr Lynn


"Hillbilly at Harvard"
Honky-tonk Country and Bluegrass
Founded in 1948 by Pappy Ben Minnich
Saturdays 9am - 11am Eastern
WHRB-FM, Cambridge, MA
Streaming at [www.WHRB.org]
Be there!
The HAH weblog: [hillbillyatharvard.wordpress.com]

Topical weblog: [walkingcreekworld.wordpress.com]

On the river in Saxonville.
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Re: Birds and the bees... IDs needed
Posted by: mrlynn
Date: August 16, 2022 07:37AM
I sent this thread to naturalist daughter and SiL. Daughter just replied, but she provides some useful information, so I'm quoting:

Quote

Glad you pointed out that adults still feed big baby birds that look to be the same size as adults. Could also have pointed out that when most passerines fledge (leave the nest), they can barely fly and generally fly-hop to a bush nearby, where they continue to cheep and chirp for food and are dependent on the parents for food. They do this because they are too big to fit in the nest, because the nest starts to accumulate parasites, and because they are less vulnerable to being killed when they are spread out rather than all together. It's always a race to get out of the nest before a predator finds it. This fledgling stage is when people find baby birds that have "fallen out of the nest" and try taking them to wildlife rehabbers thinking they need help, when really they just need to be left alone because they're fine and the parents are nearby.

I can't ID the bees, but really the OP should join FB groups like Entomology and Insect Identification, where people (including many experts) are very happy and able to identify any insect you submit. They're useful groups. There are others, but so far these groups are better than some others I've joined temporarily and then left because the quality of the discussion was subpar. Having an expert ID your bug is better than an app (mostly-- we are very impressed with the AI behind iNaturalist IDs, especially for moths. Still gets some things wrong, but it's really quite amazing).

Bugguide.net is a website that can also be useful at getting human-based insect IDs, and of course it's a great resource if you're trying to make IDs yourself.

Sarah



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2022 07:37AM by mrlynn.
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