Daisy Party, Part 2

From upland meadows across quarry rubble to the ocean's edge, daisies cheer spring into summer at Halibut Point.

Kay Ray celebrating daisies

They have always been associated with new beginnings, affection, and other sweet attributes. 

Northern Crescent butterfly

They attract insects to their nectar reservoirs in exchange for pollination, one of nature's basic symbiotic transactions.

Peck's Skipper

Cross-fertilization strengthens their genetic resilience and adaptability. Daisies open their flowers to eclectic guests.

Globetail Hover Fly

Insidious Flower Bug

Tumbling Flower Beetle

Scentless Plant Bug

Some insects seek prey on the floral terrain, party-crashers in the throbbing daisy emporium.

European Earwig

Spider Wasp

Mason Bees coupling

Innocence and survival play out in the sunburst of petals at the Park. The beat goes on.

Lillian, Audrey, and Kay Ray

Botanists, artists, and the young at heart revel in daisy constellations.

Daisy Party, Part 1

Aren't we all just a little bit happier at the sight of daisies, the most cheerful of flowers?

Oxeye Daisies, Leucanthemum vulgare  

They don't ask for much. Our nicely distributed spring rains have brought on a bounty of June bloom. Even the stony overlook is becoming colonized with flowers.

Daisies arrived here with the European colonists, and like their sponsors, have migrated energetically throughout the continent.

Fruit Fly, Tephritidae

They have any enlisted number of pollinating partners. Honey bees and bumblebees are not among them. It may be a matter of taste, or of specialized matching of mouthparts‒evolutionary chickens and eggs.

Tube-tailed Thrips, Phlaeothripidae

Some pollinators are scarcely visible, adding to the observable mysteries of the this prolific seed producer.

Thrips covered with pollen
(enlargement of photo above)

The individual florets in the composite daisy are less than a millimeter across. Their structures lend themselves to foraging by tiny insects. Evolutionary co-developments proceed at every scale.

A pollen-covered mite

Each flower sets a working banquet for eight-legged arachnid mites closely related to spiders.

Long-legged velvet mites, Erythraeoidea

The inflorescence forms a unique entirety that defines the composite family: a large number of tiny-petaled male and female disc flowers (yellow) rimmed by a corolla of ray flowers each bearing one large white petal.

Common Greenbottle Fly, Lucilia sericata

That array catches the attention of many members of the order of flies, as well as people.

Syrphid fly, Eristalis tenax

The next posting will portray more of the creatures drawn to daisies.

Housing Projects

One day early this week, standing on the quarry rim, we found ourselves in the flight path of Tree Swallows that ordinarily swoop high in the air or over the water, catching insects.

Tree Swallow pair nesting

The birds had discovered a new nesting box in a glade behind the cedars.

The female was bringing home improbably long pieces of building material, under the close supervision of her partner.

House Wren

It was a lively spring day preparing for procreation at Halibut Point.

Eastern Bluebird, male

High on a wire over the meadow a bluebird surveyed potential domiciles. The mast and gourds erected a few years ago in the middle of the field lay off to one side. It had failed to attract Purple Martins. An inviting new box stood in its place.

House Sparrow

As happened with the Purple Martin array, House Sparrows immediately took control of the opportunity. Despite their diminutive size they held their claim fiercely. This time they would have to contend with constant monitoring by Bob Sherman, a new Halibut Point staffer and longtime benefactor of birds at various State parks. Bob has been in the process of building and locating nesting boxes experimentally around the grounds. He says birds show up within minutes of a new installation. His approach to tenant rights is, "I don't play favorites. The only time I intervene is when the two very aggressive non-native species try to take over, the House Sparrow and the European Starling. They will harass and displace natives, poke holes in their eggs, kill their young."

Eastern Bluebird, female

The next day a female Bluebird stood forlornly above its intended quarters.

House Sparrow, male

A presumptuous House Sparrow emerged and settled itself resolutely atop the nesting box. Bob charged across the field flapping his arms. "My job is to harass the harassers. You have to make life miserable for them, and eventually they will give up."

Great Crested Flycatcher

Another species Bob would like to attract is the Great Crested Flycatcher, which tends to live in the treetops.

In his experience they are cavity nesters that appreciate manmade boxes with 2" holes rather than the smaller entrances required for the safe residency of the others.

That information explained both the interest and the frustration of this Great Crested Flycatcher inspecting a box a few years ago. 

Bob has re-purposed one of the old boxes that had its entrance hole enlarged by an overwintering squirrel. Bob mounted it 10 feet up on the side of the barn at the preferred nesting height of these arboreal flycatchers. He has his eyes peeled for newcomers.

Strawberry Flower Opportunists

A crab spider eying a fly on an adjacent petal

While it could be said that every visitor to the strawberry flower is an opportunist, some come with intentions of no apparent benefit to the plant.

Northern Crab Spider, Mecaphesa asperata, and an approaching ant

The Northern Crab Spider, an eighth of an inch long and four times as wide, makes a perch on a petal, a blended calico element in the floral motif. It's an ambush hunter, waiting to snap prey into its outsized, outstretched forelegs‒or forearms. Two of its eight eyes are bulging spheres that keep track of everything in its compass while it waits motionless with a powerful venom to end its victim's struggle immediately. It is reputedly incapable of biting humans.

The spider considering the ant

Crab spiders, like their namesake, can walk deftly in any direction on legs extended outward from the side their low, flat bodies. They do produce silk for drop lines but don't need to weave webs for capturing prey.

The nonchalant ant passing by must be unpalatable, and is probably armed with a formidable stinging ability of its own.

Flower weevil of the family Curculionidae

The insect world is populated with diverse anatomies, uniquely functional to themselves and fantastical to our imaginations.

 Snout-nosed weevils have developed chewing mouthparts at the very end of a long, downward-curved proboscis with elbowed antennae protruding from the sides. These adaptations are useful for feeding and for boring holes in which to lay eggs, traits that make some members of this family extremely destructive agricultural pests.

 This particular beetle is grazing pollen as it rumbles over the strawberry flower stamens, and may in fact be contributing to pollination. In other forages it or its kin tear ragged holes in the petals.

 The weevil's operational mode might inspire creative designs by military engineers. It might be one of the prompts for the wondrous barroom creatures in George Lucas's Star Wars.