{"id":34467,"date":"2025-05-02T16:11:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T23:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=34467"},"modified":"2025-05-02T16:11:51","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T23:11:51","slug":"three-spring-creatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=34467","title":{"rendered":"Three spring creatures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Today brought three spring creatures (in four pictures)<\/p>\n<p>The Wood Duck is a water bird and seasonal migrant. This is a male. This is the first time I have seen it on a piling.\u00a0<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-34469\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/woodduck250502s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Every May brings the <i>Bombylius major<\/i> in numbers to the yard. This tiny bee-mimic fly is a nectar robber. It uses its long proboscis to steal nectar and pollen from a flower without ever touching either anthers (male) or stigma (female). In this way, it violates the contract between flowers and insects: nectar in exchange for pollination. However, it is likely that its long legs and proboscis evolved, not for larceny, but to protect it from crab spiders lurking among the flowers.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-34468\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Bombylius250502s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The last few days have brought me the first hummingbirds of the season. This is a Rufous Hummingbird. Its gorget (throat) is iridescent. Under many circumstances, it is black.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-34471\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/rufoushummingbird250502bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>However, with the proper lighting, it will flash a briliant red.\u00a0<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-34470\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/rufoushummingbird250502as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Today brought three spring creatures (in four pictures) The Wood Duck is a water bird and seasonal migrant. This is a male. This is the first time I have seen it on a piling.\u00a0 Every May brings the Bombylius &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=34467\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-bugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34473,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34467\/revisions\/34473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}