Goldenrod Nightmares

As if life is not arduous enough for the Honeybee, mortal hazards wait in the Goldenrod blossoms.

A Honeybee captured by a Goldenrod Crab Spider

The canny spiders climb up to the top of the plant, where they blend into the flower.

Crab spiders are capable of changing between white and yellow, over a span of days, to match the color of their primary hunting perch.

Goldenrod Crab Spider, Misumena vatia

As camouflaged ambush predators they sit still with forelegs waiting to snap closed on unsuspecting prey. They can be very hard to see on Goldenrod.

Female Crab Spider with a captured fly,

descending with its prey

to quiet quarters.

A tiny male Crab Spider in white phase, with mosquito

Even when not color-matched to their background Goldenrod Crab Spiders are formidable hunters.

Crab Spider digesting an American Hover Fly, Eupeodes americanus

on Queen Anne's Lace flower

Jagged Ambush Bug, Phymata pennsylvanica

only half-inch long, on goldenrod stem

A complex population of creatures has evolved in the rewards and dangers of the Goldenrod Sphere.

Goldenrod Honey

Honey Bee,

pollen baskets almost full

The most industrious visitors to Halibut Point's goldenrod plants right now are Honey Bees. In exchange for their  role in cross-fertilizing the flowers they are collecting two main staples of their sustenance, pollen and nectar. Pollen supplies them with nutrition, nectar with caloric energy. 

A neighborhood hive
in the back yard of Mike and Amy Longo

The foraging worker bees, all sexually undeveloped females, may fly several miles to harvest food for the colony. They also perform diverse tasks in the hive, building beeswax combs, feeding the brood and queen, keeping house, guarding the entrance, ventilating and air-conditioning the hive. A small number of male drones keeps the queen fertile so she can place eggs in the honey cells.

Mike Longo this spring
transferring newly arrived bees to the hive

Mike and Amy Longo recently were stung with an interest in beekeeping through their friend  Joe Gaglione  who operates Crystal Bee Supply & Apiaries in Peabody.

Emma Longo with smoke pot

Their daughter Emma helps check on the hive's progress in building and filling honeycombs.

Success for all

In their first season as beekeepers the Longos were rewarded with 27 pounds of honey.

Across town, David Wise has kept hives for almost fifty years.

David and Enid Wise, right rear,
at Governor King's dedication of
Halibut Point State Park
November, 1981

David has been a member of the Friends of Halibut Point since the organization was founded as a citizens support group for the State Park. In that time the quarry site has re-vegetated considerably.

Honey Bee on goldenrod

In good years as a beekeeper David has been able to harvest honey as late as mid-October, "absconding with their golden treasure," as he wryly puts it, so long as enough is left to sustain the colony through cold weather. The goldenrod honey is flavorful and dark amber in comparison to the light amber of spring. 

He and the bees appreciate goldenrod as "an essential late-season plant before they curl up and form a ball in the winter hive....They move in and out from the center to the circumference of the ball in a constant cycle. They surround the capped honey cells which they can open for food." At the center of the ball the queen is protected at a constant temperature of 92 degrees through the winter.

David Wise

 

Goldenrod's Grand Bargain

In September one of the last great floral displays of the year unfolds at Halibut Point, in the brilliant yellows of goldenrod.

Seaside Goldenrod

Different species of goldenrod have established themselves in varied niches of the landscape.

Goldenrod on quarry wall

Wind-blown seeds help the plants to colonize diverse and unlikely places.

Bumblebees on Showy Goldenrod

The fertilization of those seeds is accomplished by insects eating flower nectar that is produced seductively by the plant. The exchange is Goldenrod's Grand Bargain with ecology and its own future.

Here are some of the insects recruited and compensated by the local goldenrod population.

Flower Fly, Toxomerus marginatus

A bee mimic.

Great Golden Digger Wasp, Sphex ichneumoneus

Flower Weevil, Baridinae sp.

Bicolored Striped-Sweat Bee, Agapostemon virescens

Locust Borer, Megacyllene robiniae

Four-toothed Mason Wasp, Monobia quadridens

American Copper, Lycaena phlaeas

Flower Fly, Spilomyia longicornis

A hornet mimic.

The goldenrod bouquets host a carnival of busyness as the insects find their last great food source of the year.

Fledging from the Quarry

Eastern Kingbirds

Birding parallels bird life in being partly solitary, partly social. For both us birders and our feathered friends the prizes often come first from individual watchfulness, then sharing. As it is at the nest, so it is to many of us who keep an eye on natural life.

Kingbird home in the tupelo tree (center)

Don, one of the birding regulars at Halibut Point, spotted a nest under construction in a tree overhanging the quarry. A pair of Kingbirds flew in and out with material in their beaks.

After a successful incubation period there were two new mouths for the Kingbird parents to feed. Usually one would stay on the nest shading the newborns from the sun while the other foraged to keep up with their relentless appetites.

The arrival of an adult with a captured dragonfly would precipitate a family drama.

Mom and Pop look identical to an outsider. It was hard to tell whether the stay-at-home mate was demanding a share of the prey, or whether their commotion had to do with dismembering the insect to feed to the young ones.

Over the next few weeks the babies prospered, fledged, and exercised their wings. The day after this photograph was taken they were gone from the nest. I hoped they hadn't tumbled out or been pirated off by a predator. It hardly seemed likely that they could have reached flight readiness overnight.

Later that day Don saw the fledglings scrambling around higher up in the tree canopy. They were still under parental care and feeding but pursuing development outside the confinement of the nest. I was disappointed to miss witnessing their first actual flight attempts.

Green Heron fishing

Just across from the nesting Kingbirds was the favorite hunting perch of the Green Herons, a dependable sight all spring on their quarry promontory. I anticipated the fun of watching them teach their offspring some fishing tricks there.

Green Heron juvenile

The herons nested inconspicuously in a grove of trees at the far end of the quarry. Once again it was Don who pinpointed the spot within the canopy and away from the camera's prying eye. The pride of the parents didn't emerge from leafy shelter until they were feathered for flight.

By the time I first saw them they were practicing heron skills in the shadowy recesses of the tree grove, mixed in with youthful sibling shenanigans.

I was sure the public phase of their development was at hand, that the parents would line up their progeny for advanced fishing lessons on the waterside ledge. But on the same day the Kingbird fledglings disappeared, so did the Green Herons. They gave up the ready source of minnows for parts unknown, and have scarcely been seen again. Perhaps they have had to concede the State Park to the humans flocking there for respite in the pandemic.