by Jerry Freilich

The natural world is a living fabric of plants and animals. The air we breathe, the food we eat, in fact life itself depends on it. Although most people know little about the natural diversity around them, we can learn a lot about it, right in our own back yards.

How many bird species do you see in your yard each year? Some, like Chickadees or House Finches come to your feeder. You probably have other visitors, like Warblers, that don't come to your feeder at all.

Your feeder is a sort of "sampler" in the sense that those birds visiting it are a sub-sample of the total number of species around you. Consider your yard bird list and try to get a feeling for the diversity it represents. Your yard is probably all in a single habitat. If you moved up-slope from where you live, if you included a lake or pond, or if your yard included some deep woods, you'd probably add more species to your list.

Did you know that nearly 300 bird species have been identified at one time or another in Wyoming? I'll bet your yard list is less than 30. So your yard hosts only about a tenth of the actual bird fauna inhabiting our state.

A glance at Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds will help put this "tenth" in some perspective. What about the other 90%? Here in Lander, our local group (affiliated with Red Desert Audubon) goes out each Tuesday morning in the spring to learn the birds. Newcomers are always astounded at the wealth of species they see.

But let me take you one step farther. On a recent May afternoon, I spent two hours collecting bees from plants in my yard. Most people don't even realize there are bees other than honeybees. But honeybees are introduced, exotic interlopers, just as Starlings are in the bird world.

Our native bees do not make hives. Instead, most of them are either solitary or live in small colonies. They belong to five or six separate, probably unfamiliar, Families (Halictidae, Andrenidae, Megachilidae, etc.). Each Family has many Genera. Each Genus has many Species.

In my two-hour collection in Lander, I netted 50 bees, of which probably 20 were different species. In other words, in two hours, I found more bee diversity than a year of watching birds in your yard. Can you imagine how much bee diversity this represents in your own yard? In the state of Wyoming? There are something close to 1,400 species of native North American bees (compared to only 600 native bird species!), a third of which may appear in Wyoming.

I would love to take each of you on a nature walk. To show you these treasures and share with you what I've learned about all of this diversity. As a trained entomologist, perhaps I have an advantage in seeing into these worlds. But even a complete amateur can collect a bunch of insects in a jar or in small vials and compare them with each other. The exercise is astounding. The sheer diversity in your own backyard is staggering even when you simply eyeball them and ask yourself, "Are these two the same or different?" Try it! And let me know what you find.

Think of how much damage can be done by a person who doesn't even know that such sensitive things exist! And most importantly, as you contemplate birds or bees, remember that each represents an entire world. Bees are a kingdom of their own. A rich, vibrant, thoroughly exciting part of our local fauna for anyone who merely cares enough to look at them.