Cliff swallows nest where insects rise
June 5, 2026
The cliff swallows are back over Liberty Park's water, their voices sharp and quick in the early morning air. They dart and wheel above the pond surface, where something invisible to us draws them down again and again. The longest days of the year have arrived, and with them the peak of the swallows' nesting season. If you listen closely, you can hear the constant chatter from their mud colonies, built now into the eaves of park structures and tucked under bridge spans throughout the Salt Lake Valley.Each swallow carries a beak full of wet earth back to its gourd-shaped nest, but the real work happens in the air above the water. Aquatic insects are emerging now in steady pulses from the pond and nearby streams. Midges, caddisflies, and mayflies spend months underwater as larvae, then rise to the surface in synchronized emergences that can last for hours. The swallows know this rhythm. They time their nesting to coincide with these daily hatches, when protein-rich insects lift off the water in concentrated clouds. A single emergence can feed an entire colony.The swallows hunt with precision that comes from generations of practice. They read the water's surface for the subtle disturbances that signal insects breaking through. A slight dimple, a momentary sparkle, and the bird adjusts its flight path mid-air. Unlike their barn swallow cousins who hunt higher in the air column, cliff swallows work the interface between water and sky. They snatch insects just as they complete their transformation from aquatic nymph to flying adult. This timing matters. The insects are soft-bodied and vulnerable in these first moments of flight, before their wings harden and their escape patterns develop. For the swallows, it is a harvest that requires split-second coordination between dozens of birds working the same patch of water.The colony's success depends on this abundance. Each pair of cliff swallows feeds four or five nestlings, and each nestling requires hundreds of insects daily during the three weeks before fledging. The parents make continuous trips between the emergence sites and their mud nests, carrying insects back in their throat pouches. The timing of peak emergence matches precisely with the swallows' highest energy demands. When you watch them hunt, you are seeing both an individual bird feeding and an entire ecosystem synchronized to the rhythm of insect metamorphosis.The water holds its own light this morning, reflecting the swallows' quick shadows as they pass. Each dive sends small ripples across the surface, and somewhere below, the next generation of aquatic insects continues its slow development toward another emergence.
Apple blossoms and the golden northern bumble bee
May 21, 2026
The apple trees are thick with bloom across the Millcreek foothills, their branches heavy with clusters of white and pink flowers that catch the morning light. Each blossom opens for just a few days, releasing its brief abundance of nectar and pollen into the late spring air. If you are walking among these trees now, you might hear the low, steady hum that means the golden northern bumble bee has found them too.This threatened native bee emerges from winter dormancy just as the apple blossoms open. The timing is not coincidental. The golden northern bumble bee is among the earliest of the bumble bees to fly, and apple trees provide one of the richest nectar sources available in late spring. A single foraging worker can visit dozens of blossoms in a morning, her fuzzy body picking up pollen as she pushes deep into each flower for the nectar at its base. The pollen sticks to the branched hairs that cover her thorax and legs, creating the dusty yellow coating that marks a successful foraging trip. When she visits the next blossom, some of that pollen brushes onto the flower's stigma, completing the exchange that will produce the apple's fruit.The relationship runs deeper than a simple trade. Apple blossoms bloom for only two weeks, but they bloom reliably, year after year, in the same locations. This predictability matters to a bee species that builds its colony slowly, with queens that must survive the winter alone and workers that don't reach peak numbers until midsummer. The golden northern bumble bee depends on this early season abundance to fuel the colony's growth. Without sufficient protein from apple pollen and energy from apple nectar, the colony cannot produce the new queens that will survive to start colonies the following year. The apple trees, in turn, produce larger, more symmetrical fruit when pollinated by native bees rather than the introduced honeybees that also visit the blossoms. The golden northern bumble bee's size and behavior make it particularly effective at transferring pollen between flowers, even in cool weather when honeybees stay in their hives.But this native bee faces pressures that the apple trees do not. Habitat loss, pesticide exposure, and competition from introduced species have reduced golden northern bumble bee populations across the West. The bee that once foraged widely through mountain meadows and valley orchards now persists in scattered populations, making each remaining foraging site more critical. The apple orchards and backyard trees of the Millcreek area provide essential habitat during the narrow window when queens are establishing new colonies and workers are building the population that will carry the species through another year. Listen for that low hum among the apple blossoms. It carries the sound of an ancient partnership, still unfolding in the warm air of late spring.
Threatened bumble bee spotted as foothill creeks show widespread impairment
July 21, 2026
Native bees are at their summer peak in the foothills right now — furrow bees probing soil edges, leafcutter bees scissoring circles from leaves, and bumble bees working whatever blooms remain along the creek margins. At least six native bee species have been observed here since late April, including Ligated Furrow Bees, Orange-legged Furrow Bees, Hunt's Bumble Bee, and Brown-belted Bumble Bee. Most notably, the Golden Northern Bumble Bee — a threatened species in national decline — has turned up in multiple research-grade observations along these same corridors just this week. Its presence here is a reminder of how much is at stake in this mountain-to-valley transition zone.What complicates the picture is that 13 of 15 water bodies assessed within a few miles carry official impairment designations — and the riparian corridors those creeks feed are precisely where these bees nest and forage. The connections are direct: furrow bees nest in bare, moist soil along creek banks, but excess sediment load smothers those banks and nutrient-driven plant growth — invasive reed canary grass, thick cattail stands — armors the ground and eliminates the open patches bees require. Leafcutter bees, meanwhile, use wet mud to seal their nest cells and rely on late-summer native wildflowers that nutrient pollution crowds out in favor of invasive species. Mill Creek, Red Butte Creek, Big Cottonwood Creek, Parleys Canyon Creek, and Emigration Creek are all on the 303(d) list requiring cleanup plans.The bees are present — and in the case of the Golden Northern Bumble Bee, their presence is a conservation signal worth paying attention to. But the habitat sustaining them is under sustained pressure from the same creeks that define this landscape. The Moist Wasatch Front Footslopes sit at a convergence point where healthy waterways and healthy pollinator habitat rise and fall together.
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