CW Owls! Guess who I found this evening! They were hoot-hooting at each other and posed so nicely

Istg I just heard a loon on Bubbly Creek, this is not what I grew up learning about There is an absurd amount of red-breasted mergansers here

Happy Tu BiShvat!! Shout out to @xercessociety.bsky.social for having a holiday guide for pollinators. More holidays should come with recommending planting lists. xerces.org/blog/tu-bish...

Can you even handle this near-full moon prairie sunset?

Hello from another most-beautimus lady, queer icon of the creekside that I met yesterday

Can you even handle this near-full moon prairie sunset?

Gamer voice lets goooooooo

trying to keep my doomscrolling to a reasonable intake (instead of 24/7) so I've been trying to add observations every day this month. Somehow, I need 26 more observations, but no new species today and tomorrow

OH SHIT biggest hit of the year just dropped: Mt Cuba released their Solidago (...and euthamia) report mtcubacenter.org/trials/solid...

Have gained +2 kestrels to my travel kit, thank you to Hailey at Catbird Creations Co for these two precious angels www.etsy.com/shop/Catbird... www.instagram.com/catbird.crea...

Have gained +2 kestrels to my travel kit, thank you to Hailey at Catbird Creations Co for these two precious angels www.etsy.com/shop/Catbird... www.instagram.com/catbird.crea...

two excellent 2026 vibes from a tree sparrow in snow: trying to be in the moment while also being consumed by endless rage

Here's how you add flower species to pollinator observations!

Crap, I just looked up my records and unsurprisingly you're right. Then I'm just posting Bombus videos for no reason...

yall i made a horrifying discovery last night I have added flower visitation data to SEVENTEEN-THOUSAND, NINE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FOUR pollinators jesus

my secret science communication origin story is that I won a writing award in 4th grade for writing a story about the time a kestrel chased a sparrow into the house this is my first photograph of a wild kestrel ever! My muse!!!!

My brain is scanning this to "Shots" by LMFAO, so in my head it's "SHRIKE SHRIKE SHRIKE EVERRRRRRRYBODY!"

SHRIKE SHRIKE SHRIKE!!!!!!

science fact: all lady belted kingfishers, including the ones I saw today, are the same individual bird as the sapphic @campmustelid.bsky.social / @nepeteaa.bsky.social stickers. queer icons of the creekside us.mushroomy.house/collections/...

happy spirit moon from dusk today

I've been trying to catch a kingfisher, but somebody else showed up by the river today

I love companies being punished for replacing workers with AI. Gimme more

Now this is a year in review I care about ...realizing I'm only 30 away from 3,000 and have thousands of unprocessed photos on my hard drive, i should probably get those uploaded, huh?

If I was a responsible academic, I'd hide this until I publish on this, but WHO CARES Spring bee visits to flowers Mar/Apr/May in MN IA WI IL IN MI What flowers are early season bees, including bumblebee queens, actually visiting? docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

shout out to our national treasure, the federally endangered rusty patch bumblebee....... dining on reed canary grass TRASH BEE www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Ok so like... the midwest. Does this need Ohio and/or Missouri? I've IDed plants in over 6,500 pollinator observations in March, April, May in the red areas. If pressed, I could expand, but I'm waffling.

Job Posting - University of Illinois Assistant/Associate Professor in Agroecology "[...W]ill serve as Director of the Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture Program (ASAP). ASAP aims to promote sustainable food systems while conserving biodiversity." illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

The area that I could see the rusty patch bumblebee daily is now totally bereft of any bumblebees Every other day I’ve been walking different areas, cursing honeybees and lowly singing “where have all the cowboys gone?”

Mental health recovery success: Going photographing in prairie remnants with a friend and watching bees climb into gentians with equal excitement

hello from a megachile friend I made today, deeply lost in the sauce at Marquette Park

Prairie evening sounds

prairie fact of the day: the first prairie garden made post-settlement was Jens Jensen's* American Garden at Union Park. He harvested plants from roadsides outside the city & planted them in flowerbeds...... among tree-of-heaven & buckthorn. You might those now as major invasive species of Chicago!

Early "native gardens" and "restorations" tended to just be "we drove around, dug up some plants, and put them all together" Here's Olmsted in 1893, talking about the lagoon edges at Jackson & Washington parks in Chicago, which took 75 rail-car loads of wild plants from all over

Here's similar stories from Jens Jensen about The First Prairie Garden Ever™️ at Union Park & from Ted Sperry (1936) about The First Prairie Restoration Ever™️ at UW Arboretum Imagine there being so many bottle gentians in Chicago city limits that you could just grab some nbd

ok but actually, I need a bodycam to capture all the honeybee-on-bumblebee assholery I see when I'm out. We've especially had issues with honeybees bullying the rusty-patch bumblebees, but haven't been quick enough to document any of it! Next year, I'm determined to put honeybees on blast

Happy bee butt season everyone Video: a bombus impatiens wiggles out of a white gentian

I am determined to turn my @inaturalist.bsky.social obs into a square over Chicagoland. Starting next on northwest burbs. Unfortunately, most of the time I spend in the center-northeast is on the highway. You can see my commute on Dundee Road VERY clearly, but there's no evidence of I-290 or I-294

Big news if true: It’s gentian season

Plants of Concern volunteers had only seen smaller bees visiting low bindweed until Gretel’s observation this year. Knowing who is pollinating our rare native plants can help us better understand how to protect them. Learn more: plantsofconcern.org

🐝 Bumble bee self-care: groom… nectar… groom… Gretel Kiefer, manager of the Plants of Concern program, found this half-black bumble bee (Bombus vagans) visiting low bindweed (Calystegia spithamaea), a rare Illinois native plant. 🧪

ICYMI: I found a prairie remnant actively in the process of being destroyed. There's not much left, but if anyone is on the hunt for some dry-friendly plants, you might as well go pick some of these up before they're all killed. 1040 Marquis St, Montgomery, IL www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Had a guess there was some remnant over here and finding the last of it literally in front of a fleet of construction trucks is TOO ON THE NOSE Reality is so tacky

Anti-turf buyback Utah State professor Kelly Kopp is part of the expert team for the lobbyist org "Healthy Green Spaces Coalition" They CLAIM to be supporting water-smart landscaping. They actually advertise all the lawn reduction legislation they've shut down I wonder how much $ she gets

Join me in having a good laugh at this Utah State professor who claims "Well actually, turf buyback programs in desert areas are bad because .... people stop watering their trees." Two very connected ideas, clearly. When turf researchers are funded by the industry... smartrain.net/blog/turf-bu...

💛 this new @sophietaddeo.bsky.social Urban Ecosystems paper on combining/comparing herbaria, lit, & @inaturalist.bsky.social plant observations in Cook County. Citizen science gives us a window into private property, while lit is biased towards conservation areas. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I commented on the observation, but I suspect b. vagans :) great diagrams made here: wisconsinbumblebees.entomology.wisc.edu/online-guide... Even tho MI has different species, I use these diagrams to train new folks.

Im behind this year, but Bee Palooza planning is in full swing with 4 days left to do all the overly ambitious things i always wanna do 😂 This Sunday, Bee there or be square.

Society for Ecological Restoration folks!!! SER World is coming up & understandably, things are... diminished. You can't have a World conference if people cannot safely fly here & budgets are being cut. SER sent out a survey asking about your conditions to problem-solve this issue. Please answer!

My ghost pipe bumble (no idea of ID) says cheers

Please share widely. Let's counteract the dismantling of public trust in science and research infrastructure with creativity and community. Apply here by 9/5. Link also in bio. bit.ly/comicscollabfall2025