21 Oct Unwanted Passengers | Oct 2015

Unwanted Passengers

Sonoran Bumble Bee

Imagine this: Unwanted passengers on a Sonoran Bumble Bee.

The bee has just taken flight from a cactus flower with two ants clinging to its legs as unwanted passengers.

The wings appeared blurred because my shutter speed of 1/5000 sec was too slow to catch a sharp photo of them.

According to Douglas L. Altshuler, honeybees move their wings at rates of 230 beats per second. See his paper: “Short-amplitude high-frequency wing strokes determine the aerodynamics of honeybee flight.”

By the way, this is much faster than a hummingbird, which beats its wings at rates as high as 70 per second (unless it’s in a dive – then the rate is up to 200/sec).

Much success,

Steve Kaye

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Birding Resources

Here are two excellent books about birds. I recommend both of them.

101 Ways to Help Birds, by Laura Erickson

The American Bird Conservancy Guide to Bird Conservation, by Daniel J. Lebbin, etal.

Did You Know?

The most effective way to help birds is to buy land.

Here are three organizations that excel at doing this.

1) American Bird Conservancy

2) The Nature Conservancy

3) The Trust for Public Land

Please visit their web sites to learn about the work they do.

Here’s an excellent book: The American Bird Conservancy Guide to Bird Conservation

You can help – Please share this blog with others.

Inspiring Respect for Nature, one bird at a time.

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