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...)

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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

looks like it could be an eastern carpenter bee.

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“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

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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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.

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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?

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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

Eastern Blurry Bee


Carpenter bee is my thought too.

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PeterB

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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.

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.

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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

....I like to.....do it......

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_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!

Mason Bee?

[crownbees.com]

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ztirffritz
Mason Bee?

[crownbees.com]

Could very well be!

... 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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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

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

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