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| A Pearly-eyed Thrasher holding out a Ginger Thomas petal |
Even the birds offer gifts of love, while native bees embrace their favorite flowers.
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| A female carpenter bee embraces a Ginger Thomas flower |
For people, flowers are widely viewed as symbols of romance, whereas birds and the bees are more often associated with learning about the mechanics of human reproduction. Which is quite odd because neither birds nor bees have all that much in common with humans when it comes to sexual reproduction.
It’s true that, like people, certain types of birds do form pair bonds with their mates that are enduring and look pretty romantic.
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| A Common Ground Dove couple smooching |
Some birds may also engage in frequent and enthusiastic reproductive activities. However the actual mechanics are not the same as for humans.
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| American Kestrels mate enthusiastically |
And they more often demonstrate their devotion with gifts of food rather than flowers.
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| A male kestrel offers his mate a mouse |
Meanwhile, for the large, black female carpenter bees mating is a once in a lifetime thing. They will seek out the smaller brown males for a brief liaison, but do not engage in any long-term bonding.
Instead, these bees are intimately involved in the mechanics of plants’ sexual reproduction, carrying packages of male pollen to female receptors in flowers, facilitating the development of seeds, and new plants.
The intimacy of this co-dependence is often touching to see.
Female carpenter bees will wrap themselves in a tight embrace around the pollen-laden stamens of the passionfruit flowers. In exchange for pollination services, the flowers offer food for the bees, and for their offspring.
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| A Passionfruit flower attracts a female carpenter bee |
The smaller Canker Berry flowers also receive enthusiastic hugs from the female carpenter bees.
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| A female carpenter bee hugs a canker berry flower |
Some birds have special pollination relationships with particular flowers as well. The shape and colors of the heliconia flowers are specially adapted to attract hummingbirds. And don’t they look gorgeous together.
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| A Green-throated Carib hummingbird with a heliconia flower |
I’m not exactly sure what lessons we should be learning from watching the birds and the bees, but it certainly is entertaining to look and wonder.
