A Sweat Bee on a sunflower. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh
The volunteer sunflowers in our backyard appear to be at their peak bloom. In the photo of the prettiest one, I spotted a Sweat Bee on one of the flower’s pedals. I decided to feature the sole insect on the lovely blossoms.
According to Kenn Kaufman in Field Guide to Insects of North America, more than 500 species of the tiny bee inhabit the North American continent north of Mexico. It’s a female-dominated society, too. The daughters help their mothers maintain their expanding nests in the soil. Males aren’t born until later in the summer, so my subject is likely a female.
The gang of volunteer sunflowers. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh
What better way to celebrate the Summer Solstice than to feature sunflowers?
We were fortunate to have volunteer sunflowers sprout up in our backyard flower garden this year. Seeds dropped by birds or buried by squirrels from one of my birdfeeders created these wonders.
At first, the gang of neighborhood rabbits nibbled the tender leaves. But apparently, there were so many sunflower shoots that the bunnies couldn’t keep up. Consequently, for the first time in the seven years we have lived in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, we have a helter-skelter stand of sunflowers.
I have enjoyed watching them grow so quickly in the string of warm days and nights we have experienced. As the flowerheads began to form, their various shapes, textures, and swirling patterns intrigued me. At the corner of our back porch, pure art in nature flourishes.
Ants, bees, butterflies, flies, wasps, and other insects depend on sunflowers for nourishment. See how many different creatures you can spot in this series of photos.
Please click on the photos to enlarge them.
How long will it be before the American Goldfinches and other seed-eating birds begin to dismantle these living sculptures in the quest for fresh, tasty seeds?
I’ve always enjoyed finding objects in my photographs that I didn’t know where there until I viewed the shots on my computer. This photo is the perfect example.
The original focus of this capture was the striation effect created by the blooming sunflower heads, the tassels of the ripening field corn, and the rows of cumulus clouds on a late summer’s day. However, upon closer inspection, I found what appears to be someone’s lost hat hanging on a stalk of a sunflower in the foreground. It’s a tradition of this Old Order Mennonite farmer to allow folks to freely harvest as many sunflowers as they wish from this five-acre field. A little box is nailed to a utility pole for donations, which are given to a local charity.
I surmise that someone lost the hat while picking sunflowers and another kind person found it, placed it where it could be seen if the owner came looking for it.
“Striations and one lost hat” is my Photo of the Week.
Roadkill Crossing 
You must be logged in to post a comment.