Flower visitors

Sorting through garden images for a talk, I came across these impressive-looking flower visitors. They were visiting what appear to be asters in a Portland garden last September.

This one seems to be some sort of unusual bee or hornet relative.


And this one looks more fly-like. Let me know if you know their real identity! I'm looking forward to spring, and watching more flower visitors....

Comments

  1. I'm more of a vegetable gardener but I love asters-- great pics!

    You most likely know about this, but just in case, this weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count, a joint effort of Audubon and Cornell. Here's the website: http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc

    And thanks for the posts about seed planting-- it hurried me up! I think we should plant a bit earlier here than we'd been advised a decade ago, esp for spring crops. It's not just the frost date (with cover I can deal with that for most things), its the heat that seems to come increasingly earlier.

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  2. Nancy,
    I didn't think about leaf-cutter bees. Good suggestion!

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  3. CEN,
    Thanks for reminding me about the Great Backyard Bird Count. I filled up my feeders again this afternoon, but haven't been too dutiful about monitoring visitors, although the cardinal pair immediately appeared, no surprise!

    And, hasn't the unusually warm weather been odd? You're definitely right that we're able to push the 'conventional wisdom' quite a bit in terms of planting now. But there's always the odd spell of cold weather that might catch us, like the April 8 hard freeze of two years ago.

    But, it's still time to try sowing peas and early greens! And start some of the transplants inside....

    Have fun!

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