Thistles and critters

A patch of thistles between the blackberry bushes (with burdock alongside; it was a prickly field!) was a-buzz with flying and crawling critters.

Skipper, and a syrphid fly. I think the skipper is Ochlodes sylvanoides, the Woodland Skipper, very common here in BC.

The bees were busy, but in a great hurry, never parking on a flower long enough for me to focus on it. A lot of work to be done; there are blackberries and flyaway thistle fluff to be made, and it all falls on the bees' shoulders, or at least their leg buckets.

More thistles, more critters.

Most thistles are edible, but grazing animals, such as the deer that was browsing in the blackberry patch, usually ignore them. The leaves are spiny, and those spines are sharp, where the blackberry leaves are mostly thornless.