jholmes's Journal

Today (7/13/13) we (Tina, My sister Deb and her husband Rob) ventured down to Battery Park to visit the National Museum of the American Indian and on the way visited Battery Park. First excitement was around a collection of bee hives which were VERY active near South Ferry. So, there were lots of honey bees in the area which I did not count in my observations. There were also at least two species of Bumble bees which I find difficult to ID without a specimen, so I did not include them in my observations either.

I did get good photos of a Katydid nymph, probably an angled-wing katydid since that is what I see most of the time in Manhattan when they as adults, but since this one was immature I left it at the Katydid family level. An interesting syrphid fly was observed on yarrow. Genus Chalcosyrphus, they have enlarged femora, I could not get this one to species for sure, so I left it at the Genus level. I will look further to see if I can get it down to species.

Headed over to the Morris-Jumel Mansion, 162nd Street in Manhattan, NY around 11:30 AM. Weather: sunny and in the 80's. I went straight for the Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) where there was a lot of action last visit. The annual cicadas were singing strong when we arrived. There were tons of bumble bees on the Mountain Mint. In addition to the photographed species, I also observed the European Wool Carder Bee, Anthidium manicatum. There were also several helictidae and maybe orchard bees in the mountain mint but I have trouble identifying them from photo or in the field. I need to work some more on that.

I also observed a Cuckoo wasp (Chrysis sp.) but was unable to get a photo. The Cuckoo wasp was on some of the shrubbery out in the sun where there was some watering going on.

I was surprised not to see any Ommatius tibialis Robber flies which were very common the week before.

We spent about an hour at the Mansion and was a lot of action.

After leaving the Mansion we headed west on 162nd Street and ran into a small community garden just before Amsterdam Ave. There was a Tiger Swallowtail on a Zinia, that was attracting the attention of a visitor, and myself from the sidewalk!