It's National Pollinator Week! See Any Butterflies?

It's National Pollinator Week!

Do you know where your pollinators are?

Or better yet, do you know how to attract them and protect them?

Pollinator Partnership has announced that June 19-25 has been designated National Pollinator Week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Talk about alliteration: pollinators can be bees, birds, butterflies, bats and beetles. (And many other species, including flies.)

We stepped into our pollinator garden this morning (before the heat shot up to 107 degrees) to check for butterfly diversity.

We spotted:  

• A Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae, flutter over to the pink mallow.
• A mournful duskywing, Erynnis tristis,warm itself on the butterfly bush.
• And a cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, linger on the lavender.

They're all pollinators.

Of course, the larvae of the cabbage white is considered a pest (see UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management website), but the adult looks like a lady in white.

The adult cabbage white butterfly can yield you a prize--a pitcher of beer or its equivalent--if you collect the first one of the year in the annual Beer-for-a-Butterfly Contest, hosted by Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology. The bug must be collected in the three-county area of Solano, Yolo or Sacramento.

Shapiro, who has studied butterflies of Central California for more than four decades and posts research information on his website, usually wins. Read why he sponsors the contest and where he found the first one of 2017 on Bug Squad.