Ground Nesting Bees

Bees need the same basic things that humans need: a place to live, food, and an environment free of poisons. Many of the important native pollinators nest underground. Among these are bumblebees and numerous solitary bees. These bees prefer to enter the soil in bare areas not covered by grass, foliage, or mulch. One reason many native pollinators are declining is that favorable habitat is becoming increasingly scarce. Modern large-scale agricultural fields are plowed leaving little undisturbed margin for ground nesting bees. Golf courses and home lawns likewise afford little bare ground when they are covered by a turf of grass. To improve the habitat for ground nesting bees which add much to the effectiveness of pollination of many crops some farms are incorporating strips of ground between crop plantings to accommodate the bees. Homeowners may provide habitat by clearing a portion of a garden or landscape planting of mulch and then leaving the ground bare and undisturbed. Bumblebees, like the one in today’s picture flying from her underground nest, often build dwellings in abandoned mouse holes. With a long tongue, bumblebees are effective pollinators of many crops, especially tomatoes and eggplants.

While the decline in honey bee populations since the mid-1980s has been carefully tracked, the status of native bees and other pollinators has not been documented as closely. One large-scale effort to identify the location and population of native bees enlists thousands of citizens to become data-collecting scientists. The program, The Great Sunflower Project, involves observing bees that are attracted to a single variety of sunflower. People, young and old, plant Lemon Queen seeds; and when the plants grow and flower, they identify and count the bees that come to forage. To sign up to participate in the project or view this year’s results, go to http://www.greatsunflower.org/. The participating citizen scientists found a bee every 2.6 minutes, but 20 percent of gardens had no bees at all. The count is important for identifying areas having shortages of native pollinators.

--Richard

Great Backyard Bird Count

Another opportunity arises for anyone to serve as a citizen scientist on the upcoming Great Backyard Bird Count. Each year the four-day bird count is held in mid-February on the leading edge of the bird migration season. Counting birds simultaneously across the continental US, Hawaii, and Canada, scientists follow trends in population numbers and bird migration patterns. This year’s bird count will be conducted February 18 through 21. Participation information and results of previous bird counts is at www.birdsource.org.

This past year participants from the 50 US states and Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories found 602 species of birds in 11 million observations. The most observed bird was the American robin. The Canada goose, snow goose, American crow, and European starling followed. Some rare bird observations were made in 2010. A new species was sighted off the coast of San Diego; and a finch was found in Ontario, Canada far from its native range of the Rocky Mountains. The Great Backyard Bird count is effective in monitoring population trends. In 1999, one thousand Eurasian collared doves, immigrants to Florida from the Caribbean, were observed in nine states. Last year, 14 thousand doves were found in 39 states. I first spotted these new doves in my backyard about three years ago. Larger than mourning doves, these unwary doves with a dark ring marking the neck often hold steady for easy viewing. Experts review the checklists of bird observations, and computer analysis helps detect errors. For example, last year I reported seeing several hundred herring gulls. The program flagged this as an unusually large number of sightings of this species for Arkansas in February. They asked me if I could verify my sighting. Indeed the birds were ring-billed gulls. Today’s picture shows a screech owl squinting in the sunlight. Rita and I found three of the small owls living in wood duck nesting boxes here on Peace Farm. I’ll dust off my binoculars and camera for the Great Backyard Bird Count.

--Richard