Category: readers’ wildlife videos

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 1, 2025 • 8:15 am

Send in your wildlife photos if you have them, at least until Saturday, when I leave. After that, please hold onto them (but do compile them!) for about three weeks. Thanks!

Today sees the return of Athayde Tonhasca Júnior, who has a photo-and-text story about aphids. His text is indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Pollinators’ emergency rations

If you are in Britain and have been gardening, visited a park, or gone for a hike in the countryside during the recent hot and sunny days, you may have been mobbed by tiny, greenish creatures. They don’t bite or swarm around; they seem to be minding their own business, but you can’t help bumping into them because they are all over the place. These are aphids (aka greenflies, blackflies or plant lice), soft-bodied insects in the family Aphididae (order Hemiptera). They are usually green, some are black, pink or mottled. If you have sharp eyes and examine one of them, you will notice ‘exhaust pipes’ sticking out from the backside of their pear-shaped bodies. These are cornicles, which exude a defensive fluid and alarm pheromones.

An aphid about to release fluid from its cornicles © Sanjay Acharya, Wikimedia Commons:

There are some 5,000 aphid species worldwide, but while most animal and plant groups reach greater diversity in the tropics, aphids are primarily temperate insects. They are all sap feeders: they insert their mouthparts into phloem (plant vessels) from leaves, buds, stems or roots and suck out the sap. Around 400 species are agricultural, horticultural and forestry pests because of the direct harm caused by loss of sap and especially the transmission of a range of pathogenic viruses.

Black bean aphids (Aphis fabae) can be a pest of more than 200 species of cultivated and wild plants © Alvesgaspar, Wikimedia Commons:

Aphids have complex and outlandish life cycles. They reproduce asexually most of the year, with wingless females giving birth to female nymphs that are essentially mum’s clones. Viviparity (giving birth to live young instead of laying eggs) is just the start: the young’uns are born pregnant, and their embryos may already have the developing embryos of granddaughters. This Russian dolls scheme is known as telescoping generations.

When temperatures drop and daylength decreases as the season progresses, or during any other change in environmental conditions such as overcrowding, or reduced food quantity or quality, winged females (alates) are produced. They fly to another host plant and give birth to more wingless females. As the end of the summer approaches, males finally are born. Mating takes place, and the females lay eggs that will overwinter on the host plant. These patterns vary considerably depending on the species and climatic conditions and food quality, so alate aphids can be around anytime.

An aphid giving birth to a fully formed daughter © MedievalRich, Wikimedia Commons.

Aphids are aphid-making machines: each female is reproductive for up to 30 days, giving birth to 60 to 100 live nymphs. These figures add up quickly, so that aphids could theoretically build up enormous populations in no time. Botanist Charles François Antoine Morren (1807-1858) – who coined the term ‘phenology’ – estimated that one Aphis sp. had the potential to create a quintillion individuals after ten generations. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), biologist, anthropologist and ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, had a go at estimating the outcome of this growth: I will assume that an Aphis weighs 1/1000 of a grain (1 grain ~ 64.8 mg), which is certainly vastly under the mark. A quintillion of Aphides will, on this estimate, weigh a quatrillion of grains. He is a very stout man who weighs two million grains; consequently the tenth brood alone, if all its members survive the perils to which they are exposed, contains more substance than 500,000,000 stout men—to say the least, more than the whole population of China! (Huxley, 1858).

As we are not wading in layers of aphids, these projected growth spurts evidently don’t materialise. Bad weather and natural enemies wipe out most aphids way before they become noticeably abundant. However, favourable conditions such as an unusually mild spring, like the one we just experienced, will cause a spike in their numbers. We can only imagine what may happen as warm springs become the norm on a warmer planet.

So far we haven’t seen a connection between aphids and pollinators – but there is one.

Phloem sap is rich in sugars but relatively poor in what aphids require the most – amino acids. To get the nitrogen they need from amino acids, aphids must ingest far more water and sugars than they can absorb. They solve this problem by pumping out the excess intake from their bodies in the form of a sugary solution we know as honeydew.

An aphid secreting a droplet of honeydew © Amada44, Wikimedia Commons:

Honeydew is a waste product for aphids and other phytophagous hemipterans such as scale insects (coccids), whiteflies and jumping plant lice (psyllids). But some ants not only feed on the sticky stuff but also ‘milk’ aphids by tapping them with their antennae to induce the secretion of more honeydew. Ants also protect aphids against natural enemies.

Such a nutritious resource is not ignored by other insects such as hoverflies and parasitic wasps. Bees such as the European honey bee (Apis mellifera), bumble bees (Bombus spp.) and a few solitary bees are also known to be aphids’ customers, but their relationships have been barely investigated. Honeydew is not as good as floral nectar because of lower nutritional value and possible presence of harmful secondary metabolites. But these factors were not obstacles for buff-tailed bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) seen feeding on the honeydew secreted by giant willow aphids (Tuberolachnus salignus), who in turn fed on white willow (Salix alba) in Cornwall, England. Apparently, unusually hot weather increased evaporation, concentrating honeydew’s sugars and thus making it more attractive to the bees (Cameron et al., 2019). In a chaparral habitat of Southern California, 42 species of solitary bee were recorded feeding on honeydew produced by scale insects colonising chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum) during early spring, when there are few flowers available to pollinators (Meiners et al., 2017). Besides functioning as emergency food, honeydew could be an life-saving alternative in a warmer world with increased frequency and intensity of droughts, which reduce nectar’s volume and sugar content (Phillips et al., 2018).

A: Giant willow aphids on a branch of white willow. B: A buff-tailed bumble bee collecting honeydew from leaf litter beneath branches bearing aphids © Cameron et al., 2019.

Aphids are the top subject of queries to the Royal Horticultural Society, and one of the main reasons for gardeners reaching for the insecticide canister. But the degree of alarmism caused by these insects is unjustified, because only severe infestations are harmful. Besides, aphids are food to bats, tits, warblers and finches. They are also preyed on by spiders, ladybirds, hoverflies, lacewings and many others. Aphids do have a major role in food chains, and are also likely to have a minor but not negligible part in pollination ecology, even though details of these workings are yet to be revealed.

This tale was inspired by and dedicated to the late Professor Simon Leather, an expert on aphids and author of the excellent entomological blog Don’t Forget the Roundabouts.

A tree bumble bee (Bombus hypnorum) feeding on honeydew © Orangeaurochs, Wikimedia Commons:

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 17, 2025 • 8:15 am

Today ecologist Susan Harrison has kindly provided another photo installment. Susan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

An Oriole helper at an unusual nest

In Ashland, Oregon in late May, some Bullock’s Orioles (Icterus bullocki) were tending their young in a beautifully woven nest along Bear Creek.   Unlike normal Oriole nests I’d seen nearby in the past, which were suspended from branches of tall Fremont cottonwoods (Populus fremontii), this one was nestled in the foliage of a small Oregon oak (Quercus garryana) only 10 feet or so above a well-used bike and footpath.  (See here for a lovely article about how Bullock’s Orioles weave their nests.)   The unusual positioning of this nest made it easy to photograph, but I sure hoped it was safe from predators.

Here’s the adult male, feeding the chicks with a parental dedication not always seen in gorgeous male birds:

He also took time off periodically to sing his territorial song:

As unusual as the nest location was that a second male helped feed the chicks.  While observing, I mistook this bird for the female, but later realized his pale orange coloring and faint black markings were those of an incompletely mature male.

The male helper:

“Helpers at the nest” in many bird species are young adult offspring who may opt to stay around the nest and assist their parents in raising their next brood, while learning how to parent and waiting for a future year with better breeding opportunities.  Nest helping is not a widely observed behavior of Bullock’s Orioles, though.  The only reference I could find to a similar observation suggested that the female of the pair might have died.   Alarmed by this possibility, I raced back to the nest and was relieved to find the female present.

Here’s mom:

The lucky chicks, who will spend 2 weeks in their woven home, were being tended by three adults!

My speculation is that when the terrible Almeda fire of 2020 burned several towns and miles of riparian forest along Bear Creek, in addition to displacing thousands of people, it created a shortage of Bullock’s Oriole nesting sites — thus leading to both the unusually-placed nest and the young male helping his parents rather than breeding.

The next photo shows the burned riparian forest in the general location of the nest.  Most of the fire-killed trees are Fremont cottonwoods.  I took the photo because of the Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) artfully posed on a fire-killed Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa).

Burned riparian forest and geese:

And a few other birds around Ashland in late May:

Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana):

Green-tailed Towhee (Pipilio chlorurus):

Canada Jay (Perisoreus canadensis):

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 15, 2025 • 8:15 am

Having finished off birds, damselflies, and dragonflies, John Avise has a new topic for us this Sunday: whales. John’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Whale-watching Trips, Part 1.  The World’s Largest Animal.

Coastal Southern California promotes itself as one of the whale-watching capitals of the world, and indeed many whale-watching boats operate out of this area, taking tourists on off-shore excursions to view cetaceans and other sea-life.  I‘ve been on quite a few of these several-hour trips, and they’ve nearly always provided wildlife treats that will be the subjects of this photographic series.  Today we begin with photos of a whale species that passes through this area during the winter months on its migratory travels.   An adult Blue Whale also happens to be the largest animal that has ever inhabited our planet.

Blue Whale, Baleanoptera musculus:

Blue Whale closer up:

Blue Whale fluke:

Blue Whale spout:

Blue Whale, blowhole close-up:

Blue Whale, dorsal fin:

Blue Whale, longitudinal view:

Readers’ wildlife photos and videos

June 14, 2025 • 8:15 am

Here’s a Saturday potpourri of photos and videos from several readers. Their comments are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

A video from Jonathan Dore:

I took this video a couple of days ago when I noticed a solitary ant dragging the carcass of a dead wasp across our deck. By the time I got my phone out, it had gone over the edge and was carrying the wasp, while hanging upside down, along the bottom edge of the edging strip of the deck. After going a couple of feet it disappeared behind the edging strip, presumably the entrance point to its nest, or at least the next part of its route. At first I thought the ant was holding onto the wasp with a couple of legs while hanging on to the deck with the other four, but looking closer I believe it’s using all six legs to hang on and is carrying the wasp using only its jaws. Both aspects  —  the leg-hanging and the jaw clasping  —  see like a good illustration of the ant’s remarkable strength.

From Natalie in Berlin, a spider that I identified as a triangle web spider. She was amazed at its laughing-face markings. There is one species found in Europe and North America (Hyptiotes cavatus), but this may be the European spider of the same common name, Hyptiotes paradoxus. She found it while washing lettuce, and let it go.

And a short video of the spider emerging from the lettuce with narration by Natalie:

An insect and some mammals from Christopher Moss. First, the insect:

The white-spotted spruce sawyer (Monochamus-scutellatus), likely a male from the length of the antennae:

From Christopher Moss, “the first muskrat [Ondatra zibethicus] photos of the year”. He adds:

I see he is eating a stand of reeds, and has nearly flattened all of it. Fortunately there are plenty more for him to move on to. 

From Paul T.:

Urban wildlife or near my house.  West side of Madison WI. Just taken with my phone. Sandhill cranes [Antigone canadensis] from last spring, and last month’s wild turkeys [Meleagris gallopavo], with four strutting their stuff, and one outside my window.

. . . And from Cate Plys, a squirrel that’s probably leucistic:

I found it near our place in Michigan where we are now! Sadly it scampered up a tree and I had to take these pics at extreme close up, so the quality could be a lot better.


Readers’ wildlife photos

June 10, 2025 • 8:15 am

Today we have a passel of bird photos from reader Ephraim Heller’s recent trip to Africa. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Brief introduction: Continuing with my virtual safari, these photos were taken in Tanzania in April 2025. Most are from the Serengeti National Park with a few from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Today’s photos focus on colorful birds I think are pretty as well as a few otherwise interesting birds.

Pin-tailed wydah (Vidua macroura) male in breeding plumage. Males have an elaborate courtship flight display, which includes hovering over females to display their tails.The males I saw were busy attracting females to their territories and aggressively defending their territories from other males:

Usambiro Barbet (Trachyphonus usambiro). I love photographing barbets because of their distinctive feathers. The barbets get their name from the bristle-like feathers which fringe their beaks:

Purple grenadier (Granatina ianthinogaster). I loved its gorgeous, saturated colors:

Nubian woodpecker (Campethera nubica):

A variable sunbird (Cinnyris venustus) kindly posing in a garden:

Yellow bishop (Euplectes capensis):

Grey-breasted spurfowl (Pternistis rufopictus) and chick. Endemic to Tanzania:

Lesser flamingos (Phoeniconaias minor):

A black-headed heron (Ardea melanocephala) expresses his displeasure at a newcomer who had the temerity to land on his dead tree:

Southern ground hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri):

Common ostrich (Struthio camelus) male:

Kori bustard (Ardeotis kori) is the largest flying bird native to Africa:

African sacred ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus). According to Wikipedia:

“For many centuries, sacred ibis, along with two other species in lesser numbers, were commonly mummified by the Ancient Egyptians as a votive offering to the god Thoth. Thoth, whose head is that of an ibis, is the Ancient Egyptian god of wisdom and reason, and thus of truth, knowledge, learning and study, and writing and mathematics. The sacred ibis was considered the living incarnation of Thoth on earth. Pilgrims from all over Egypt brought thousands of ibis offerings to four or more main temples, which at their peak mummified and buried thousands of birds a year in gigantic and ancient catacombs (one complex was in operation for 700 years). Eventually, an estimated eight million birds were mummified and entombed by the Ancient Egyptians.”

“Pliny and Galen ascribe the invention of the clyster (enema) to the ibis, as according to them it gave such treatments to hippopotami. Plutarch assures us it uses only salt water for this purpose. 1600 years later this was still accepted science, as Claude Perrault, in his anatomical descriptions of the bird, claimed to have found a hole in the bill which the bird used for that purpose.”

I’m not saying this is true. I’m just asking questions.

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 24, 2025 • 8:15 am

Today we have a diverse set of photos from Amy Perry of Indiana. Amy’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them. After this we have only one batch of photos left.

All photos were taken at Ritchey Woods, a state-designated nature preserve owned by the city of Fishers, a suburb of Indianapolis. The preserve is surrounded by commercial and residential development and an airport and is a treasured haven for families, dog walkers, runners, and birders and other nature lovers. The majority were taken with my iPhone 11 in the past year; a few plant photos were taken by the park naturalist, probably with her iPhone around 2019.

Common box turtle (Terrapene carolina) sitting just as royally as you please on a bridge:

Insects mating. Haven’t been able to identify the species [Readers?]:

Milkweed tussock or milkweed tiger moth caterpillar (Euchaetes egle) on, unsurprisingly, milkweed, probably Asclepias syriaca:

Trout lily (Erythronium americanum). Spring ephemeral. Also called yellow adder’s tongue and yellow dogtooth violet. One of the few yellow spring ephemerals, in my experience. Most are white. Spring ephemerals bloom before the tree canopy leafs out, as they take advantage of the sunlight that the trees block after the leaves appear:

Dutchmen’s Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria). Spring ephemeral:

Shagbark hickory (Carya ovata). I like species that have an obvious identifying characteristic, such as the shaggy bark here. It’s a bonus if the common name and/or Latin name also reflects the identifying characteristic:

Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica). These beauties carpet the forest floor during April. The pale pink stripes are said to guide insects to the nectar or pollen. The blooms close if the temperature goes below 45 degrees F. Spring ephemeral. I just learned that another common name is Fairy spud, which seems apt:

More spring beauty, to show the attractiveness of their natural massed growth. They are at the foot of a sign marking a border of the nature preserve:

Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus). This is the spathe. Grows in January and February in moist soil. Sometimes the energy radiated by the growth actually melts the surrounding snow or ice. True to its name, it has a strong, unattractive odor:

Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica). Often the blossoms are pink when they first bloom and then turn a lovely blue. Spring ephemeral:

Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana). Ending on a depressing note. These trees have a lovely oval shape but are invasive. Also called Bradford pear.  This species is not on the state’s official invasive list, but plans are in the works to have it added soon. The official invasive list prohibits the sale, purchase, transport, or giving of invasive species within the state. When several species were added a few years ago to the list, this one was discussed, but so many nurseries had it “in the pipeline,” that conservationists decided to take a small victory and wait to add it later: