sick of the backyard wildlife stuff yet? too bad! the monarchs are back.
this is the first monarch butterfly we've seen this year. it's a little early for them to start migrating (we saw a bunch heading south along the lake michigan shoreline in early/mid september last year), so i hope this is a resident and not a traveler.
monarchs lay their eggs exclusively on (and their caterpillars only eat and thrive on) milkweed, which can be found in green areas along roads and in open meadows. monarchs and the corresponding milkweed must be regionally compatible; i.e., if a monarch lays eggs in a variety of milkweed that is not native to that monarch's home range (say, a west-coast milkweed planted in the midwest), the eggs/caterpillars will not survive. there are a bunch of websites that will help you match milkweed varieties to your region, so if you want to plant some milkweed (and you should), spend a few minutes on the google to find the right milkweed for your area.
unfortunately, liberal applications of herbicides for agricultural purposes have greatly reduced milkweed in rural areas, leading to a precipitous drop in the monarch population -- so much so that conservation groups are now warning of the possibility of localized or even widespread extinction of the species east of the rocky mountains in the next 20 years. western monarchs are doing better, but not much. yikes.
so finding monarchs in the garden is a good thing. i think this is a female, but it's hard to say for sure -- the male has a pair of subtle yet distinguishing black spots on the lower dorsal wings, and that area isn't clear in these pics. i also didn't get a pic of Henry getting up close and personal with this monarch, so close that his bangs were brushing the butterfly's wings as it fed. but really, would you care about a looming H-bomb if you had a fresh red zinnia to feast upon? no, you wouldn't.
here, the monarch posed with a pair of silver-spotted skippers checking out an adjacent flower.
we also saw this newcomer (at least, this is the first time we've photographed it). it's some kind of skipper, but i'm kinda butterflied out, so the full ID will have to wait for another day.
butterflies, bees, wasps, beetles, dragonflies, and so on. how about a garden visitor who isn't an insect?
see there? let's go a bit closer:
since i put up a hummingbird feeder, this lady has been hanging around. it's a female ruby-throated hummingbird, which are relatively common in this area of the country. we haven't seen any males of the species yet, which look similar from the neck down but have dark heads and brilliant red necks (hence the name, obviously).
the feeder (which some readers may find familiar) is along the sidewalk between the house and the garage, and i've been changing out the sugar water several times a week. so far, we've just seen the female, although i don't know if it has been the same one each time. when i spied her this morning, i tip-toed out on the deck to get a picture, but she saw me immediately and retreated to her perch in the nearby spruce (as seen above). i waited outside, motionless, for her to return to the feeder, but she never budged. and judging by the way she kept staring directly at me, it was quite obvious that she saw me and was waiting for me to leave. my bright tie-dye t-shirt probably didn't help.
fun facts: hummingbirds will aggressively defend their favorite food sources from intruders, which can include other hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, cars, and even humans (i haven't been attacked yet, but i only change/refill the sugar water after the sun goes down). they beat their wings up to 80 times per minute [update: error. the fastest hummingbirds beat their wings at 80 times per second, not minute. ruby-throated hummingbirds clock at about 50 times per second.], although "beat" is a misnomer: they actually move their wings in a figure-eight at an extremely high frequency (cough). their hearts beat an insane 1200 times per minute! that helps explain the need for a high-sugar diet. however, when resting, their heart rate drops to around 50 beats per minute. evolution is so weird.
anyway, as soon as i came back inside, she immediately returned to the feeder, and the following pictures were taken through the storm door.
the bright green back and black/white tail feathers that help identify the ruby-throated hummingbird are clearly visible.
in this last shot, it appears that part of the hummingbird's tongue is visible. hummingbird tongues are up to twice as long as their beaks, and they use them to lap up nectar (or in this case, sugar water). the tongue can lap as fast as 13 times per second. i'm just going to leave that factoid there without further commentary.
hopefully we'll be seeing more of our lady hummingbird friend (and her friends as well). but if you thought i'd end this post without more garden insect pics, you were wrong:
Hey guys. Long time, no blog post. Trust me, I know that this is long overdue, but better late than never. Words of wisdom, I know. Anyways, let's get to the story.
So today, Mom (aka Holli) and I went kayaking at Potato Creek. On the drive there, we realized one thing: It was VERY foggy. I took some pictures of it.
So, yeah, it was foggy. After about five minutes, we turned down a road, and BAM! The fog was gone. If you want pictures of the non-foggy road, you're out of luck. I don't do non-foggy. So, Mom and I continued our drive.
After what seemed like 10 minutes (probably because it was 10 minutes!), we were there. Guess what we saw? I'm just going to say that if you guessed fog, you were half right. Don't worry, all of you who chose no fog! You are also half right! If you somehow happened to guess that there was only fog on the surface of the water, you are correct! You win ... nothing! I took some pictures as well, so don't you worry that I didn't.
No, it's not the only picture. It is, however, the only picture I took when we weren't on the water. We headed out on to the water to some strange driftwood creations. (Note: Not man-made.) It was foggy, and I (and Mom too, I guess) took some pictures.
Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about our friend, the blue heron. We were tangled in the driftwood (Mom by looking at it, and me literally tangled in it, as I will show you in a sec) and he just came flying out, yelling really loudly. I think he was angry, but you can't really tell from the picture.
Well, I think that is the end of our adventure, so until next time, this is Liam.
ahem. as i mentioned in an update of my previous post, after perusing a very detailed website (ok, multiple websites, because i have issues), i came to the conclusion that my swallowtail butterfly IDs were possibly inaccurate. so i thought i'd pull on this thread until the entire sweater was unraveled. down the ant hole we go!
i had identified this critter (above) as a male eastern swallowtail. this appears to be correct, although the proper name is eastern tiger swallowtail, so named for the four black "tiger stripes" on the upper front of the wing. the male has a few small ventral (front or abdomen side of the wings) spots of blue, while the back (dorsal) side of the wings has a larger row of blue spots.
female eastern tiger swallowtails are dimorphic, meaning they have two different morphs (appearances): yellow and dark. the yellow morph looks almost identical to the male, except they have a more pronounced row of blue spots on the dorsal side and vivid spots of yellow/orange around a blue row on the ventral side. i don't think we've seen one of those before, but i could be wrong (haven't been looking that closely, but i will now). the dark morph has mostly dark wings, of course, with the same yellow/orange-blue-yellow/orange rows as the yellow morph. they also sport a narrow row of yellow spots on the back edge of the wings. clear as mud, right? yup. for example, here (i think) are female black-morph eastern tiger swallowtails (below). note the narrow line of yellow spots along the back of the upper wing:
here's another one from a dorsal view:
the above butterfly was previously identified as a female black swallowtail. sorry, but nope. eastern tiger black-morph. ye gods, nobody without an entomology degree cares about this.
black swallowtails, on the other hand, have dark wings (duh) with a pair of yellow/orange rows of spots on the ventral and dorsal sides. the spots are more subdued on the female, which also has a prominent blue row between yellow/orange rows on the lower dorsal wings. the yellow/orange rows extend all the way to the top of the wings, unlike the female black-morph eastern tiger swallowtail. for example, i think a male (below):
i haven't gotten a good look at the dorsal (back) side of these individuals, so i don't know if our visitors are male or female. i'll be looking now, of course.
of course, considering all the variables, i could be wrong. but whatever, because they're awesome to look at, right? and the parsley patch is covered with swallowtail caterpillars (who knows which kind), which is a good thing:
some other visitors to the garden. a common whitetail dragonfly:
a big wasp, which i think is actually called a great black wasp. according to the tubes, they paralyze their prey (usually larger insects like grasshoppers, katydids, and cicadas) and put it in an underground burrow, then lay their eggs in it. lunch for the kids! these guys (girls?) love the amaranth.
not to be outdone, here's a bunch of frogs. look at all those frogs. all hail the door frogs.
the garden has a lot of bugs in it, which is a good thing. i'm all for the bugs, even the bad ones, as long as they're doing their thing outside. when i'm not watching the birds, or making dinner, or working, or whatever, i like to check out the bugs being buggy, and sometimes i take pictures of my favorites. for example:
we found this stag beetle hiding out on a hydrangea, not flying but acting naturally, so i let it be. it was probably hiding from the rain. i can dig it. this one is big, almost 1.5" long, long, long. i don't know what it wants with the hydrangea, but i'm not about to help. that's a lot of beetle/beatle references, and yes, i know they're terrible (the puns, not the band). mean mr. mustard sgt. pepper eleanor rigby.
we've found a lot of mantises in the garden, and the more, the better. they eat lots of undesirables, which is good, plus they're just plain cool, which is great. this one is a juvenile, about a third of its eventual 5" length.
plus there's a plethora of bees, wasps, ants, other beetles, flies, etc. etc. etc. those pics are for another post. today i'm going to focus on the main attraction: butterflies. we have swarms of them. and the monarchs haven't even made their appearance yet, which is usually early september. they might have come sooner, but for some reason, the milkweed i planted never came up.
this is a checkered white butterfly, investigating the basil. they're small and very quick, and they're numerous. around here, at least.
silver spotted skipper. slightly bigger than the checkered white, but just as quick and numerous. at any one time, i count four or five on the zinnias alone. side note: zinnias are the most popular flowers in the garden for butterflies. bees prefer the sunflowers, while wasps (?!?!) like the amaranth and rudbeckia.
the big dogs of the butterfly show are the swallowtails. we thought we had two species, eastern swallowtails and black swallowtails. upon more careful examination, it turns out we have...two species, eastern swallowtails and black swallowtails. allow me to explain.
this is a male eastern swallowtail. they are relatively common around here, and they are big. they also don't mind being photographed from up close, which is nice.
we have been seeing this dude a lot, and we thought it was a black swallowtail. wrong. turns out it is a female eastern swallowtail (aka dudette), which you can tell from the two rows of yellow/orange spots low on its wings (internet research told us this, not like we knew it already). not to be confused with:
a female black swallowtail, which only has one row of yellow/orange spots on the wings. [update: after perusing a butterfly website designed to make you second-guess your previously certain butterfly IDs, i'm not totally convinced the above female butterfly IDs are accurate. hopefully they are, but considering how multiple species look virtually identical, who knows.] apparently we haven't seen any male blacks yet, which look like the male easterns if you transposed the black and yellow. but the best/craziest part was when the male eastern and female black started fighting. at first we thought male and female easterns were mating or something. but after more analysis, it was revealed to be a cross-species gender battle. fight fight fight fight fight
this went on for at least 10 minutes. i took about a million pictures, but most were junk because the butterflies were fighting all over the damn place. the garden, the sidewalk, the deck, and so on.
so that's what i've got. after downloading these pics, i went out and took some more of bees, wasps, and other pollinators. unfortunately, i forgot to put the memory card back in holli's camera, so none of those pics were actually saved. dammit. oh well, next time.
Friends, the glorious day is upon us again! This morning, everyone had a nice hot breakfast, then Liam walked Max to the bus stop for Max's first day at intermediate school before heading for his own first day in junior high. Henry was stuck with me for a few more minutes, then I drove him to school as well. That's right, if you're keeping track at home, we now have three kids in three different schools, and it will be that way for the next five years, at which time Liam and Max will overlap at the high school for two years. (Yeah, our school system is weird.) We're going to have to take things one day at a time for a while to fall into a new routine, but so far it's pretty great ... particularly the part where the house is so quiet during the day that I can concentrate and be more productive.
And now, the obligatory first-day-of-school photos:
