Here are a few scenes from a trip to the Missouri Botanical Gardens.
A huge carpenter bee of some kind was eating pollen out of a firey blossom of some kind. I think these guys don't collect pollen they just eat it out of the flower.
Here is another one probably drinking nectar and eating pollen out of another purple flower.
Bee houses were nearby, these are for honey bees but I suspect they have some tubes drilled for the carpenter bees around here too.
Here is a dragon fly feasting on some pollen of a sensitive plant. These plants have leaves that close when you touch them.
The lotus flowers on the pond were also blooming. I wonder if they are any good for pollen or nectar?
I rarely ever see anything flying into them.
Here is a silver spotted skipper on some lupine looking flower. I rarely ever get a chance to photograph one since they are so fast.
The garden also had some prickly pear cactus in it. More soon in the succulent growers community.
Fall is starting here and the spiders are out everywhere. I suspect a huge cross spider was around here somewhere... Unless a bird ate it.
Later I found a smaller one in a forested area. These guys are everywhere especially when I'm looking for mushrooms and end up getting covered in them.
Now its off to avoid the mosquitos. They seem to avoid the spider webs somehow, maybe its by just brute force numbers...
That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)
Wonderful nature photos from you again. I liked the photo with bees on flowers the most.
They were huge bees in the sun, easy for my zoom lens to focus. I wish birds would sit still like this more in a nice sunny open area lol.
Oof those mosquito swarms! Beautiful pictures! Nobody has to drill holes for carpenter bees, they do it themselves, they are very good at tunnelling into roofbeams here
I suspect they do that here too if there aren't enough prairie plants stalks available. They kind of have a deep blue tint to them.