Oriental poppy with an honest to goodness honey bee at work.
In recent years, honey bees are few and far between around here. I’m sure that most of the pollinating on my fruit trees is done by smaller, native bees.
A beautiful crane fly, hanging inside a sunlit bush. (This is who I was trying to photograph when I took the picture of the syrphid fly I posted yesterday. I recommend sticking your head under a bush occasionally. There's a whole other world in there.)
"Stranger than science fiction." That's how an ecologist describes a strange fungus that hijacks cicadas’ bodies and behavior, turning them into "zombies."
CNN reports on the the fungus Massospora cicadina and how it's impacting some of the cicadas emerging this year: https://flip.it/cxfw5K