A native North American solitary bee foraging on eastern prickly pear cactus. Often called the "forgotten pollinators" native bees and other native pollinating insects receive little media and scientific attention compared to the non-native honey bee. The prickly pear cactus is an endangered species in Ontario. Make sure to purchase native plants for your garden from reliable, locally sourced native plant nurseries, and never collect plants from the wild (bee: Apoidea: Halictidae: "Agapostemon texanus"; plant: Cactaceae: "Opuntia humifusa", Species at Risk in Ontario).
Milkweeds support more than just the monarch butterfly. Several other species of insect including the red milkweed beetle have coevolved with, and are dependent on milkweed species for their food, and therefore survival. Red milkweed beetle mating on common milkweed in our garden (beetle: "Tetraopes tetrophthalmus", family Cerambycidae; plant: "Asclepias syriaca", family Apocynaceae).
A second shot of the male and female, seasonally flooded forest, Loreto, Peru ("Donacobius atricapilla", Passeriformes).
