Wednesday: 9 May 2007
Yesterday marked the end of finals for Spring Semester 2007. Lots of graduates, lots of happy people, lots of grandmothers convening at UGA on Saturday to attend graduation. For me it’s a month-long vacation before summer classes start June 8, and I have all kinds of plans to clean up indoors and out, harvest and catalog plants, and generally get my life in gear.
Right now I’m involved in some vaguely purposeful weeding and digging and planting and I’m spending a lot of time on the front stoop, where Lady Seymour holds dominion. Lady Seymour is a two-step metal folding ladder that has accompanied us around for at least twenty years. Glenn purchased two for the lab, and they were so useful that we had to have our own Lady Seymour at home. It’s one of those general all-purpose useful devices that sits in the middle of our comings and goings because we can grab her to put up hummingbird feeders, hammer a nail into a wall, fill the birdfeeders, do some low pruning, and so forth.
She’s also a perfect cat perch, and yesterday I discovered she’s very popular with Leafcutting Bees, Megachile species. Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.
This one was entering through the mysterious little holes that appear at the bottom of the main metal strut loop that acts as the front legs and as a handle. I’d seen it coming and going for a couple of days and it gradually became clear that it was carrying something. Leaf pieces!
Apparently leafcutting bees as adults sip nectar and eat pollen, and so do their kids. The adults are solitary, but do congregate to build nests in any available cavity accessible by a hole. They cut out a perfectly shaped leaf piece to fit the inside tunnel as a septum, or inner wall, lay an egg, fortify it with pollen and nectar, and then return with a new piece to wall the previous chamber in. Here’s a site that talks a bit more about leafcutting bees.
They could be considered a pest since they do cut round sections out of leaves, but they also pollinate plants at the same time, and so (especially now) might be considered rather important.
While I was waiting for the leafcutting bee to return I noticed this bright little spider wandering about the front porch, perching on the cart wheels awaiting repair for a broken axel:
This seems to be a Magnolia Green Jumping Spider, Lyssomane perhaps viridis, although there’s only a hint of the bright red cephalothorax patch seen in most of the photographs at bugguide. But the eyes are right, and so are the spots on the abdomen.
This one was hard to get a photograph from any viewpoint other than the front since the flash would immediately cause it to face in my direction.
Right now I’m involved in some vaguely purposeful weeding and digging and planting and I’m spending a lot of time on the front stoop, where Lady Seymour holds dominion. Lady Seymour is a two-step metal folding ladder that has accompanied us around for at least twenty years. Glenn purchased two for the lab, and they were so useful that we had to have our own Lady Seymour at home. It’s one of those general all-purpose useful devices that sits in the middle of our comings and goings because we can grab her to put up hummingbird feeders, hammer a nail into a wall, fill the birdfeeders, do some low pruning, and so forth.
She’s also a perfect cat perch, and yesterday I discovered she’s very popular with Leafcutting Bees, Megachile species. Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.
This one was entering through the mysterious little holes that appear at the bottom of the main metal strut loop that acts as the front legs and as a handle. I’d seen it coming and going for a couple of days and it gradually became clear that it was carrying something. Leaf pieces!
Apparently leafcutting bees as adults sip nectar and eat pollen, and so do their kids. The adults are solitary, but do congregate to build nests in any available cavity accessible by a hole. They cut out a perfectly shaped leaf piece to fit the inside tunnel as a septum, or inner wall, lay an egg, fortify it with pollen and nectar, and then return with a new piece to wall the previous chamber in. Here’s a site that talks a bit more about leafcutting bees.
They could be considered a pest since they do cut round sections out of leaves, but they also pollinate plants at the same time, and so (especially now) might be considered rather important.
While I was waiting for the leafcutting bee to return I noticed this bright little spider wandering about the front porch, perching on the cart wheels awaiting repair for a broken axel:
This seems to be a Magnolia Green Jumping Spider, Lyssomane perhaps viridis, although there’s only a hint of the bright red cephalothorax patch seen in most of the photographs at bugguide. But the eyes are right, and so are the spots on the abdomen.
This one was hard to get a photograph from any viewpoint other than the front since the flash would immediately cause it to face in my direction.
