Butterfly Gardening Blog

I almost forgot to post that the hummingbirds are back again! I’m sure they’ve been back in this area for a while, but we hadn’t gotten our feeders out yet and hadn’t seen any. Well, we finally saw the first one on Friday. I wasn’t able to get any pictures of it – they are not real cooperative with photographers!

While mine is mostly a butterfly garden, hummingbirds like many of the same plants, so it is kind of a hummingbird garden too!

(Technorati Tags: hummingbird, butterfly)

I found a Black Swallowtail caterpillar on my Golden Alexanders!

My understanding had been that if any Swallowtail in this area were to use Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) it would be only the Woodland Swallowtail (Papilio joanae) – but others sources seem to doubt that P. joanae is really a separate species anyway. Up until now I never saw any caterpillars on the plants. I did for the first time recently see an adult looking as though she was interested in laying on them however, but I didn’t find any eggs.

Now, as I was trying to find a truly native host plant for Black Swallowtails, I bought a Yellow Pimpernel (Taenidia integerrima) plant last year for my garden. Earlier this spring I found an egg on it, and later a first instar larvae, which of course I would assume would be a Black Swallowtail (P. polyxenes). I didn’t really keep track of it to see how it was doing – but have been very excited to have found a native host plant for them that they will actually use!

Anyway, on Friday, I looked over at the Yellow Pimpernel plant, which incidently is right next to the Golden Alexanders, and saw two caterpillars on it! The larger of the two was towards the base of the plant and kind of hidden from view:

Then, I look up, and towards the top of the plant – on a stem that already had all its leaves eaten off I see another caterpillar! Only this one was in the process of molting. The first pictures I tried to take as it was actually molting were all out of focus. Apparently this camera had a hard time figuring out what to focus on and it doesn’t have a manual focus so there was nothing I could do. I eventually put my hand up behind the caterpillar and then it focused just perfectly! By that time it was done molting but it was still a cool picture – its head is still white and if you look closely you can see the dead skin behind it, mostly behind the stem it is on:

The whole thing left me wondering though – were the caterpillars on the Golden Alexanders P. polyxenes or joanae?

(Technorati Tags: butterfly, caterpillar, Black Swallowtail, Papilio joanae, Papilio polyxenes, Taenidia integerrima,)

I just happened to be lucky enough to have the camera with me, get it aimed and in focus for the few seconds this skipper sat still on this flower! There still isn’t a whole lot of flowers blooming yet – I need to get more that bloom in April and May – but the Pin Cushion Flowers/Scabiosa are blooming really nicely now!

(Technorati Tags: skipper, butterfly, flower )

My Baptisia australis is blooming! This is the first year mine has bloomed! The first one I had got eaten so badly by rabbits that it died. I think I got this one last year or the year before. Either way this is the first year it has ever bloomed! Hasn’t keep it from having Dusky Wings laying eggs all over though! There were eggs on it when I got it! (I don’t have separate information pages up yet about duskywings or Baptisia but I will eventually.) I had a difficult time getting the flowers in focus – I still have lot to learn with this digital camera!

(Technorati Tags: Baptisia, flowers)

These two frogs (or toads, I don’t know which) were mating in one of our little ponds (same one as on May 4 and April 7). They were, uh, ‘involved’ for like over 24 hours!

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I’ve gotten a few of our Legacy grass plugs in now. I still have a lot to do though – it is hard work! With legacy you can just kill an area of existing grass with Roundup and then put the plug in. But I still dug away the dead grass around it to make it easier for it to grow. I’m a little concerned about how well it will compete with the other grass in our yard. Here is one plug shortly after it was planted:

(Technorati Tags: grass, buffalo grass, Legacy, lawn)

Later on Friday I took the following picture of frog eggs on a Nelumbo lutea leaf in one of our ponds. The pond is the one pictured on April 7th.

(Technorati Tags: frog eggs, pond, frogs)

I have no idea how to make ‘Mantis’ plural – is it ‘Manti’, ‘Mantis’s’? Either way – some hatched!

We always have lots of preying mantis laying eggs around our gardens in the fall and I always look forward to the first day the following spring when I first see the little babies crawling and jumping around. I hate to admit it but I almost get more excited about the baby preying mantises than I do the butterflies sometimes! They are just so cute!

The little guy in the picture below I found in front of our house near the door. Later I saw at least 4 different individuals. There are likely many, many more around too!

I didn’t measure him/her and its hard to tell the scale from this picture, but I’d say it was less than 2 cm long. They don’t particularily like to sit still for photos either, so I did good to get this one picture:

I think I got the picture thing and the paragraph problem straightened out now – I ended up installing an older version of WP. I will add a bunch of pictures, but I want them posted on the date I took them so I will add back a few post dated entries here.

I’m also going to better organize my blog categories – so posts may be moving around for a few hours until I get it straightened out.

— update: I have all the pictures I have so far on the blog now! I think I have all the categories organized right now too!