These images were captured in early December 2023. It was still the rainy season, where you would see flowers blooming beautifully. Even the weeds that previously looked so disturbing to the view now become more attractive with the blooming flowers.
Coatbuttons are the most common; the weeds grow in rows along the right and left sides of the road we are on. So many coatbuttons blooming certainly invite pollinators to stop by just to sip the sweet nectar. Bees and wasps are the most dominant among the pollinators.
I noticed a cuckoo bee, so tiny with a metallic green color, that came to the flower.
This guy looked so happy, perhaps while singing with his loud hum, greeting the beautiful morning. He sips the nectar, sings again, then moves on to other flowers, and so on.
The cuckoo bee wasn't the only one who enjoyed the delicious nectar on the coat buttons, other pollinators also came along, including a tiny ladybug. That's a greedy little guy; he likes to hunt aphids but occasionally also snacks on flower pollen.
This one is no less greedy: the hoverfly. This fly is also an active pollinator. It buzzes louder than a bee. What a noisy guy!
While the nectar feast is still going on, danger could threaten the survival of the pollinators at any time. If they're not careful and land where they shouldn't, they'll become a meal for this tiny predator, the crab spider.
This guy was quite smart in choosing hunting grounds. All he needed was patience, waiting for the right time to ambush the unlucky ones.
All of the images here are my work, taken with a Xiaomi POCO NFC smartphone and an assembled external macro lens.
