wildlife

[Knud]

Maggi, thanks for the edit, fixing my quote, I could not figure out what I did wrong. I'm rusty, must post more regularly .

Arnold, I had heard that here too, that the yellow crocuses would not be eaten. In my picture above, they did eat the blue ones first, but the next morning the yellow ones were gone, too. And some pale yellow C. chrysanthus nearby, also up 'head first'. We have some strong yellow large crocuses (vernus?, Dutch?), but they come up later here, and by that time the deer had stopped coming, so I do not know about those.

Knud

[Knud]

Maybe there is a difference in taste?

Yes probably, and it may well be that the colour signals poison or just a bad taste. Aposematism, or warning coloration, has been an accepted concept in zoology for 150 years, and now also (as far as I understand from 'googling') in botany the last 20 years or so. Yellow and red are are among colours mentioned as aposematic, and apparantly there is not a conflict between colour as an attraction to pollinators and a defence against predators. Botanists out there, please correct me if I am wrong!

Interestingly, predator behaviour in relation to aposematism is speculated to be learned behaviour, so my yellow crocuses may have been grazed by a young deer. I hope it was left with a bad taste in its mouth after eating three bunches.

Knud

[Gerdk]

Yes probably, and it may well be that the colour signals poison or just a bad taste. Aposematism, or warning coloration, has been an accepted concept in zoology for 150 years, and now also (as far as I understand from 'googling') in botany the last 20 years or so. Yellow and red are are among colours mentioned as aposematic, and apparantly there is not a conflict between colour as an attraction to pollinators and a defence against predators. Botanists out there, please correct me if I am wrong!

Interestingly, predator behaviour in relation to aposematism is speculated to be learned behaviour, so my yellow crocuses may have been grazed by a young deer. I hope it was left with a bad taste in its mouth after eating three bunches.

Knud

Like the other monkeys of all colours we can perceive red best because it signals ripe fruits. So besides an attraction to pollinators (insects and hummingbirds) red attracts also animals. Many garden tools are painted red to make them easier to find when they are lost.
Gerd

[brianw]

If like me you associate holiday visits to Scotland with different wildlife to home, (SE UK for me) you would find visits to see plant and wildlife in Canada quite different. This link
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/baby-ospreys-reunited-with-parents-burning-nest-1.6903059
 shows how common Ospreys (a Scottish rarity) are. I could watch an adult resting between hunting while I sat at my laptop in the apartment I stayed in recently; a suburb of Dartmouth, NS. (Town names are something else ;-))) Nest poles are mainly erected to try and stop them using the overhead power poles. It sometimes works.