{"id":102137,"date":"2021-09-09T05:15:47","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T11:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=102137"},"modified":"2021-09-09T06:10:58","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T12:10:58","slug":"the-rufous-hummingbird-and-the-crane-fly-mosquito-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/09\/the-rufous-hummingbird-and-the-crane-fly-mosquito-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rufous Hummingbird And The Crane Fly (mosquito hawk)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unusual flower-fellows.<\/p>\n

I’ve photographed a variety of insects on the flowers being fed on by hummingbirds but a crane fly is a new one for me.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 1600, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is another photo of a Rufous Hummingbird nectaring on bee plant taken on Antelope Island on a very smoky morning nine days ago. It wasn’t until last night that I noticed the crane fly on the flower cluster. I always enjoy photos like this because of their ecological implications and the interesting variety of pollinators I see sharing the nectar resource. For me it’s a bit like a treasure hunt as I review my photos looking for various insects on the flowers.<\/p>\n

At first I wasn’t sure this was a crane fly because it appears to be smaller than most crane flies I see but when I zoomed in on the high resolution image I became fairly sure that it was. There are many species of crane flies and I presume that they vary in size.<\/p>\n

But I’m slightly confused about one thing – what was it doing on the flower? I suspected that it was probably competing with the hummingbird for nectar so to help me confirm that suspicion I did a little research on the diet of adult crane flies but I got a variety of inconsistent results. At least one site flatly states that crane fly adults eat nectar<\/em> but others state that they eat little or nothing<\/em> and other sites say they eat nothing at all<\/em> during their short life span as adults.<\/p>\n

To me that’s even more evidence that research done on the internet needs to be taken with an entire shaker of salt.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: I’m not absolutely positive that the insect isn’t an unusually large and long-legged mosquito – I’m certainly no entomologist. Either way it’s a new insect for me sharing a flower with a hummingbird.<\/em><\/p>\n

What do you think?<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unusual flower-fellows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,334,8,392,3512],"tags":[31,5932,146,447,1679,2173,2187],"class_list":["post-102137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-rufous-hummingbirds","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-crane-fly-diet","tag-flight","tag-mosquito-hawk","tag-rocky-mountain-bee-plant","tag-rufous-hummingbird","tag-selasphorus-rufus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/rufous-hummingbird-7819b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-qzn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102137"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102165,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102137\/revisions\/102165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}