Bug Squad

And just like that, a female monarch butterfly fluttered into our Vacaville pollinator garden this morning, Aug. 10, and left a dozen or so calling cards: precious eggs. We earlier saw a male monarch patrolling the garden on the morning of July 23, but he left to go find the girls.

The Secret Life of Vineyards depicts what you may never see: the life that inhabits a vineyard. A UC Davis team created the insect-themed ceramic-mosaic mural that was recently installed at the Matthiasson Winery, 3175 Dry Creek Road, Napa.

In his fascinating book, "Life on a Little-Known Planet: A Biologist's View of Insects and Their World," Connecticut-born biologist/entomologist Howard Ensign Evans (1919-2002) asks "What good is a butterfly?" "To the farmer, it is an adult cabbage worm or carrot caterpillar, and better off dead.

Ah, the fiery skipper, Hylephila phyleus! They are, as UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Art Shapiro says, "California's most urban butterfly." Shapiro, who has monitored the butterfly populations of Calfornia since 1972 and maintains a research website at https://butterfly.ucdavis.

It's Friday Fly Day! Time to post an image of a fly. Or two flies. On a cockroach. The scenario: a large cockroach drowned in a small water trough located near downtown Vacaville, Calif., and when the water drained, the roach slid out. It proved to be a feast for green bottle flies.