Vignettes: Bumble Bees and Mockingbirds

8/9/2019 Vignettes: Bumble Bees and Mockingbirds

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Bumble Bees

& Mockingbirds



Bumble Bees

No, not another vignette on why bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly. But youcan find pages of such links on the Web.

One early summer morning in 2000, while waiting to take a river cruise in Essex,I heard a thrumming sound and noticed a large bumblebee hovering over a gravel

walkway adjacent to the cruise building. The bee was about three feet above thegravel, maintaining a precise westerly heading (I checked this against a boatcompass). The sun was behind the bee, but I'm sure it could still see the sun and use

it for orientation. It could also have been using the earth's magnetic field to orientitself. Experiments have shown that bees have high magnetic sensitivity.

Whenever another bee appeared, even fifty or a hundred feet away, my beeshot off so fast that I could barely see it go. (A bumblebee can fly 10-15 feet persecond.) After a brief confrontation, or seduction attempt -- it was too distant for meto see what was happening -- my bee returned to precisely the same position, altitude,and heading.

Bumblebee with a load of pollen (yellow substance on hind legs). For scale, bee is on edge of a

board 3/4" (1.9cm) thick. Copied under terms of GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2



Now and then people would move through the area, unaware of the bee, whichobligingly moved aside and let them pass, then returned to its original position. (Thebee may have been a male, which has no stinger. This might explain its behavior,

which certainly wasn't that of a worker bee.)I was there for nearly an hour, and no one else gave any sign of having noticed

the bee.I approached within two feet of the bee and squatted down to get a better look.

It tolerated my presence. Bumblebees are our original wild bees. Most outdoor workers (carpenters, roofers, etc.) consider them easygoing and good-naturedcompared to wasps and the like, but I don't advise people to push their luck. Thosebig worker bumblebees pack a lot of venom. I was once stung in the nose afterblundering into a bumblebee that was foraging on alfalfa blossoms. My eyes swelledshut, and my nose did a fine W.C. Fields impression.

Whenever my bee spotted another bee, off it went, with remarkable speed andagility. In an eye-blink it would be gone to check out the other bee, then just assuddenly it was back, hovering at the same distance from my face. The thoughtoccurred that it might be a worker female, protecting a nest in the gravel directly below her, but I saw no entrance hole, and not once did the bee go below itsestablished height above the gravel. I saw no sign of another bee in my bee's area.

A bumblebee and a swallowtail butterfly share a thistle. Credit: John &

Karen Hollingsworth, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service



Bumblebees are highly social insects, but their colonies are not as large asthose of honey bees, only twenty to a hundred workers compared to many thousands,and only the queens survive the winter to repeat the reproductive cycle. Because of this, bumblebees don't store a surplus of honey, so they're of no interest to beekeepersbecause there's nothing to harvest. On the other hand, they're critically important tothe Massachusetts cranberry crop, being far more efficient pollinators than honey bees. Each worker bumblebee accounts for 1,300 to 1,400 cranberries. They'reequally important to many other crops, as well.

It came time to board the cruise vessel. I watched as some thirty peopleheaded for the boat, many of them passing right through the bee's no-fly zone. Notonce did it attack, but simply moved to one side or the other, just enough to avoidcontact. These people still failed to notice the bee. How could they help but hear thesound of its wing-beats?

When we returned from the river cruise (highly recommended) ninety minuteslater, the bee was still on station, unnoticed by another group of waiting passengers.

One day in late spring of 2002 I was in the Essex Greenbelt, watching some

A nest in a garden shed. Pete Griggs released this photo into the public domain.



bumblebees foraging on wildflowers. And there, foraging along with the bumblebees,I saw the strangest thing. It was an insect similar to a bumblebee but slightly longer,and where its rear end should have been it had a round aperture nearly a quarter-inchin diameter. Its looked for all the world like a pitted black olive with wings. I’ve beenunable to locate any information on this. Perhaps I was hallucinating. If any of you

can clarify this sighting, I’ll give you due credit if the publication hasn’t already gone topress.

English: Bumblebee about to alight on a Heuchera, its glossa

extended and ready to extract nectar. Permission to use this work

verified and archived in the Wikimedia OTRS system.



Mockingbirds – Northern Mockingbird ( Mimus polyglottos)

It's hard to believe how few people are aware of natural events occurring right undertheir noses. I recall a day at Singing Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea, when a mockingbird alighted on the bathhouse roof and began performing its amazing repertoire of

song and mimicry. I'll swear that bird sang for ten minutes or more without oncerepeating itself. I was on the bluff above, with a good view of people passing to andfrom the bathhouse. Hundreds passed during that bird's performance, and not one

looked upto see thesinger onthe roof, orpaused tohear itssong.

Pound forpound,mockingbirds are themostaggressive

birds in North America, but this aggression is usually defensive. I’ve had malemockingbirds fly right at me, coming within inches of my face as they flashed those big

white spots on their wings. I've even had them slap my face with their wings. Andthey growl as they attack. The females are less territorial, but just as tough. Both

sexes will even chase away crows toprotect their young.

One day in early June 2003 onecrow of a flock under study was perchedin a tree branch over the road. The area’sresident male mockingbird, claiming thattree as part of his territory, harassed thecrow at length, time and again makingclose passes apparently aimed atsnatching a tail feather. After severalminutes of this harassment, the crow let

Crow eyes mockingbird.



Crow W ears Mockingbird

out a yip! It sounded just like a small dog whose tail had been stepped on. I caughtthis on camera, with the crow eventually

wearing the mockingbird like a spiky hat. Another day, a mockingbird alternated

between harassing the crows andperforming fine mimicry of killdeer, blue jay,red-wing blackbird, robin, meadowlark,bobolink, and others that I couldn’t identify.

Badgered by a mockingbird, one crowmade a musical chirrup sound, repeating itevery time the mockingbird attacked. At firstI thought the mockingbird was doing thechirruping, but I could see the crow jerkingslightly each time I heard the sound.

The mockingbird at home has been singingevery time I step outside. Some stanzas of his "song" are recognizable mimicry -- blue jay, sanderling, and a putt-putt sound thatmay be man-made. He spends so much time singing that I wonder whether he has amate. I've seen no female near him. Rather late (6-6-2002) to be vying for a mate.Perhaps he's adolescent, too young to mate. His song repertoire is certainly asimpressive as any mature male's.

The same spring I filmed starlings nesting in a restaurant exhaust fan (See), twomockingbirds had their fledglings take maiden flights within minutes of each other.

The local crows were quick to notice, and moved in for the kill as the six young birdslanded here, there and everywhere – on roofs, sidewalks, and even the back of a pick-up truck. The mockingbird parents put up such a valiant fight that two hours later, allsix of their babies were still alive. But then certain crows started provoking themockingbirds into high-speed chases that took them far from their babies and left theother crows free to do their killing. I don’t know how many babies survived, if any. Ihad to leave after three hours.

The resident mockingbird at Lobsta Land in Gloucester still intimidates other birds by flutter-flying & flashing his white eyelike wing-spots. One day he saw me watchinghim through the restaurant window, and approached me, repeatedly extending, thenfolding his wings, in an apparent threat display. This may be the same male who, inthe summer of 2003, flew right in my face, actually slapping me with his wing feathers.They do this to crows, too. Tough birds.

Catbirds are from the same family as mockingbirds, Mimidae. They’re slightly smaller,solid black, and have the same jaunty uplifted tails. They also share the samebuoyant, swooping flight style. But the similarities pretty much end there. The



catbird’s vocalizations seem limited to catlike mewing sounds, and they’re not nearly as pugnacious as mockingbirds. All catbirds in this area are solid black, and I haveaccess to data and photos for gray catbirds only. When I get what I need, I’ll add it.Meanwhile, here’s another nice photo of a northern mockingbird.

http://oddsbodkins.posterous.com

©Don DesJardin Copied under terms of GNU Free Document License

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Vignettes: Bumble Bees and Mockingbirds