I am back but extremly jet-lagged, and I got nothing substantive today. Just be aware of that! Besides, looking at the comments on the Dawkins post, I see that people were pretty busy yesterday.
Diana MacPherson continues her documentation of the chipmunks in her yard, this time with an email containing three photos and the title, “An adorable sequence of chimpmunks grooming.” Her notes:
Here is one of the juvenile chipmunks. Sadly, he seems to be developing mange on his nose & maybe this is why he was grooming so much – it was also a rainy day so perhaps he was just getting clean after getting wet. I love his expression in the second picture, like he’s upset that he forgot something.I haven’t seen the really mangy one for a couple of days but when I do see her she is hoovering seeds. I suspect she is the mother & is pregnant.
And. . .as lagniappe here’s a beautiful honeybee (Apis sp.) bumblebee (Bombus sp.) from reader Jason. I don’t know from bees, so if you know the species by all means weigh in below. The reader sent it as a “honeybee,” and although I’m okay on dipterans, I fail with hymenopterans.
That’s a bumblebee of some sort. Are they all Bombus?
Think Apis is honey bees…
Hard to say without the rump clearly visible. Here is a British Isles guide that would apply to the continent (minus a few species for our impoverished wildlife)
http://www.birdguides.com/webzine/article.asp?a=3814
Quite a few ‘Humble’ bees (as Darwin calls them) have cuckoo species that imitate them.
How the Humble Bee became the Bumble Bee –
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/aug/01/humblebee-bumblebee-darwin
Brings to mind Bombur.
That’s definitely a bumblebee (yes all bumblebees are Bombus). It’s likely either Bombus terrestris or Bombus lucorum.
Not hortorum?
B. hortorum should have a second yellow band on the thorax and a longer face. It’s a bit hard to tell from the angle but I stick by my first call. Color patterns can be a bit tricky with Bombus though as they have Müllerian mimicry so various species coalesce on a particular warning coloration in a given region. For e.g. see how much the patterns vary in B. terrestris here: http://www.zoologie.umh.ac.be/hymenoptera/biblio/211_Rasmont_et_al_2008_Overview_Bombus_terrestris_ASEF_2008_44_2_243_250_full.pdf
I haven’t dug into it but I’d wager that sympatric species look similar.
It looks like bombus terrestris to me – though, having lived in Japan for so long, it’s a long time since I saw one.
Either one. This explains why I could not find it on my big bumble bee poster for the U.S.!
I like how “big bumble bee poster” sounds. But, where did you get a “big bumble bee poster”?
Great chipmunk photos, Diana!
Thanks! They are such cute things!
“I love his expression in the second picture, like he’s upset that he forgot something.”
_
A brolly perhaps? Lovely series of gesture photos, Diana!
I suspect the flower on which the bumble bee is feeding is some kind of thistle.
A chipmunk with a brolly would be crazy cute!
Lovely chipmunks! But I think that’s some kind of teazle (teazel?), not a thistle.
Don McLeroy update: After your most recent post him, I and several others ventured over and commented on his arguments for the resurrection of Jesus H. Christ and against evolution. McLeroy responded on August 2. 2014 at 2:39 pm: “I am on a weekend trip; I will have time to answer questions sometime late Sunday.” Nothing since, It must have been a very long weekend.
The chipmunk is doing the ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’!
🙂
Very cute.
The chipmunk photos are just begging to be LOLed.
Whee, thanks for posting my piccie. I was really pleased with it and sorry if I called it a honeybee I have no clue what I’m talking about when it comes to insects.
Jason.