What better way to start the summer than a nature challenge? This post is my first in an exchange with Aaron Haiman, of A Birding Naturalist, who suggested a series of back and forth nature observation challenges. You can watch his video explaining the game here.
Aaron is the author of Birds of the California Delta, and an inspiring nature educator and advocate for science. We first met a year ago at a book event as fellow Heyday authors, and when Aaron proposed this game, I was excited to join in!
Aaron’s first challenge was to talk about five local species that have caught my attention in my neighborhood. It came at the perfect time. I’ve been walking a lot at dusk, and enjoying all the activity of evening pollinators and other crepuscular life.
My most exciting discovery of the late spring was the exuberant relationship between valley carpenter bees (Xylocopa varipuncta) and sacred datura (Datura wrightii). I had read that hawk moths were the primary pollinators of daturas, but the flowers are clearly also beloved of carpenter bees. Datura flowers open as night falls: the new buds spiral open as the sun is dropping behind the horizon. Once they start to open, it is a quick process, and they are fully open in less than five minutes. I discovered that carpenter bees start monitoring the about-to-open flowers about a half hour before they open. And as soon as the bees are able to get inside, the reason they are so anxious becomes apparent: the anthers are covered in copious fluffy white pollen, and the first bees in get completely covered in it. Over the course of a week, I watched the process over and over again, as bees eagerly entered the floral tubes, buzzed around and around inside, and emerged coated. Even after the first bounty has been carried off, bees continue to find enough pollen that they fight for chances to enter the flowers, jockeying for spots within.
By the next day mid-afternoon, the previous night’s blooms have wilted and are drooped over the leaves like dropped tissues. The coming night’s buds are coiled tightly, ready for their turn.
The hawk moths that I would have expected at the datura flowers were elsewhere in the neighborhood. (And maybe they show up later in the night at the daturas?) I spent many evenings watching moths both large and small visiting some thriving clumps of lantana on another block. Unlike datura, the lantanas are not native, but they have certainly found fans in the native moths. I regularly spot three or four white-lined sphinx moths (Hyles lineata) on the bushes, and many small moths that I am unable to identify in flight.
One of these smaller moths happened to come to me, though, when I found a dead one outside my door one morning. It was a girdler moth (Dargida procinctus), and I enjoyed the opportunity to examine it closely under a hand lens.
My final species for the challenge is neither a flower nor a pollinator, but a different creature of the twilight. These are insect bats, most likely Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis). I don’t see them every summer, but this summer I’ve seen them a few times, hunting in swift swooping flights over the street next to a small park, just as the light is fading.
So here is my challenge for Aaron: tell a twilight story from your nearby nature, either dusk or dawn. Any species, any habitat. What lives are unfolding during these in-between hours, neither day nor night?
If anyone else would like to join us, you can leave comments here (and can link to your own post) and also on Aaron’s posts on his channel.
Happy summer gloamings!
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