Page 23 - Black Range Naturalist, Vol. 2, No. 3

When I talked with a local butterfly expert, and after he viewed the objects, he indicated that butterfly eggs are elongated, not roundish like these. He agreed with us that there are many species of moths, and many do lay roundish clumps of eggs, and I also had
times look more closely at tree and wildflower pollen when finished with our banding just before noon. We would also gather several other flower heads in town during our morning
seen that information on the internet search.
So then, now it was time to get an opinion or comment from a botanaist, and we did that. After we sent photos and comments about what we were experiencing, he did have a short comment. We liked his experience, plus his website is an interesting one, including several short and educational field videos about trees, flowers, and insects on them, and including events during the different parts of the seasons. His kind response was that, actually, he was stumped with the objects. But he did send us to a family of plants as requested for pollen size and possible matching ideas. That proved a dead end as well, but we continued to check several common flowers and trees in the remote banding area, and even in town taking a closer look into the pollen world .
It was not known how long the objects were remaining on the migrating hummers heads, but they did seem somewhat tacky. Some hummers would have many of these round objects on top of the head while others just a few single-looking round balls. On some hummers, I could actually count individual objects while viewing with our hand magnifier of 10x power. The round egg- looking objects also seemed fresh, not like the smaller and dusty yellow pollen that sometimes gets caked on the bill or top of the head. But again, these whitish round objects had to be something common. One day a recaptured banded female hummer that we had collected from the day before, had more of the objects again the next day. Hmmmmm, not giving up.
When looking for a pollen size match, we would continue on with our morning banding and at
Black Widow egg sac above and spider eggs below. Photographs by Janiece Ward.
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