SIERRA CLUB — BUMBLEBEES NEED A DIVERSE DIET TOO — SEPIA PHOTOGRAPHY — PLANET EARTH LANDSCAPES group

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Sierra Club* United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) * American Bird Conservancy

PLANET EARTH LANDSCAPES has over 7,000 members and over 347,000 photos and videos. 

Queen honeybees have a pretty cushy life. Living inside the hive, worker bees take care of most tasks like collecting pollen and nectar, producing honey, and fixing up the hive. But that’s not the case for queen bumblebees. For most of their life, the fuzzy, fat, black-and-yellow bees in the genus Bombus fly solo and have to fatten up after hibernation, found a colony, and raise a batch of baby workers before they get a day off. Those weeks as a single mother are perilous for bumblebees, which rely on early-blooming flowers to survive the spring. A new study shows that the more diverse the flowers the queen bees can access, the better off the bees are in the long run.

Unlike queen honeybees, Apis mellifera, which can live for years and overwinter in their hives, the bumblebee life cycle is annual. In the fall, after mating with a male drone, new queen bumblebees dig a cavity in the ground to overwinter. When they emerge in the spring, it’s their job to find a new nest site, which can be a cavity in a tree, a hole in the ground, or even a nice tussock of grass. But searching for real estate is hard work, and the bees need to eat flower pollen for protein and sip nectar for sugar as they go about their business. 

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tango-stumbleonl4tsRNRobertMicheline Canal

BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY — PLANET EARTH SUNRISE SUNSETS group

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Sierra Club* United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) * American Bird Conservancy

PLANET EARTH SUNRISE SUNSETS has over 5,000 members and over 114,000 photos and videos.

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54StorminWillyGJ54tucker.tterenceJohn SteedmanDiegojackturbguy – pro

BIRDS — FEEDER WATCH CAM — PLANET EARTH IN BLACK AND WHITE group

All PLANET EARTH groups supports:

Sierra Club* United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) * American Bird Conservancy

PLANET EARTH IN BLACK AND WHITE has over 3,800 members and over 173,000 photos and videos. 

Cornell FeederWatch Cam

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alexinatempaJohn KocijanskiSARK S-Wl4tsValt3r Rav3ra – DEVOted!

UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES (UNHCR) — PLANET EARTH OUR HOME group

All PLANET EARTH groups supports:

Sierra Club* United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) * American Bird Conservancy

PLANET EARTH OUR HOME is our flagship group with over 12,000 members and over 875,000 photos and videos.

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Contests Every Month

Yemen’s ‘marginalized ones’ endure hunger, displacement

Conflict and displacement have compounded centuries of discrimination against Yemen’s Muhamasheen minority, denying access to jobs, documentation and humanitarian aid.

AMRAN, Yemen – It was past noon, the time when Mariam would normally start preparing lunch for her children. But today, she and her extended family of 14 have not yet had their breakfast; the cold firepit in the corner of their tent an unwelcome reminder that they last ate more than a day ago.

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John Horstman (itchydogimages, SINOBUG)alpenglowtravelersDiegojack–MARCO POLO–tucker.tterence

SEPIA PHOTOGRAPHY — BIRDS — BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCH — PLANET EARTH ARCHITECTURE group

All PLANET EARTH groups supports:

Sierra Club* United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) * American Bird Conservancy

PLANET EARTH ARCHITECTURE has over 6,000 members and over 297,000 photos and videos.

BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCH

SCIENTIFIC NAME: Sitta pusilla
POPULATION: 1.4 million
TREND: Decreasing
HABITAT: Loblolly, Longleaf, Shortleaf, and pine-oak forests.

The perky, social Brown-headed Nuthatch never strays far from its favorite pine-forest habitat, where small flocks range through the trees, easily detected by their squeaky calls. Even smaller than its close relative the White-breasted Nuthatch, it’s no wonder that this tiny songbird’s species name is pusilla, Latin for “very small.”

Tiny Tool-User

The Brown-headed Nuthatch, like the Green Heron, is one of the few birds in the world known to regularly use tools. When foraging, it may select a flake of pine bark, then use it as a lever to pry up bark scales to get at food hidden beneath, usually insects and spiders or their eggs. This enterprising little bird has also been observed using twigs and pine needles as tools. A Brown-headed Nuthatch will even carry its tool from tree to tree as it forages, or use it to cover up a cache of seeds.

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Josef Lex (El buen soldado Švejk)Michael Lockeroba66Ximo MichavilaRafael Gomez – http://micamara.es