Butterfly Gardening Blog

We next walked through a path in a somewhat wooded area. We saw little toads jumping all the around the edges of the woods!

I also saw a butterfly species I’ve never seen before! They may be common to some people, but I haven’t seen any in my garden. It is from the family Satyridae, but I’m not sure what species it is. I need to find out for certain. They are all brown with pretty eye spots on them. There were a bunch of them flying around. I was lucky to get a couple pictures that were in focus – none with their wings closed though. They were all either Little Wood Satyrs or Wood Nymphs:

Then I got really excited when I saw 2 Zebra Swallowtail caterpillars resting on Pawpaw trees growing along the path!

Both of them were getting ready to molt – I could tell by the sort of glassy eyed appearance of their head capsules when I looked at the close up.

It may seen silly to some people, but seeing those 2 species really made my day!

As we walked we passed through lots of prairie areas filled with native flowers and grasses. This part had lots of grey headed coneflowers in it:

Here were some black-eyed susans and some small white flowers:

Here’s a picture from some distance filled with black-eyed susans and many other flowers:

As I said earlier we went to Shaw Nature Reserve on the 4th – and I was so excited! We saw some pretty cool stuff – at least I really think it was cool!

I won’t post the pictures all in one day – there’s too many, so I’ll divide it up over as many days as it takes.

So, once we started walking out toward the prairie area we were walking on a gravel road:

And all up and down that road there were small butterflies puddling – dozens in little bunches! Now, for some people that may not seem like a big deal – but I’ve never seen it before, just heard of it. I’ve only seen one maybe two butterflies puddling anywhere at one time.

Quite a few of them were Pearl Crescents (at least I think they were, I sometimes can’t tell them apart from Checkerspots):

And then there were some type of Blues – I can never identify the species with these either. My guess is an Eastern Tailed Blue. These ones were really in larger number flying and resting all around each other. They flit around so fast and rarely have their wings open. However, one seemed to be injured and sat really still with its wings open – still I can’t identify it:

Anyone out there who can identify these species for certain?

It was certainly a great way to start out our walk!

And that gravelly stuff on the road – I want some like it to put somewhere in my garden – it must have just the right mix of minerals for them to be attracted to it for puddling!

Apparently its rare for a wasp sting to get infected but mine did. The swelling had gone down somewhat and then was worse yesterday. So my husband took me to the urgent care place – my finger was red, really swollen and a little warm so I was given some antibiotics. Its a type that will make my skin more sensitive to sunlight, so I will have to be more careful going outside the next few days. Makes me feel a little bit sick too.

Oh, and I was able to confirm that it was a paper wasp. I checked – very carefully – around the butterfly bush I had been trimming when I got stung and sure enough there was a paper wasp nest there. The wasp is now dead. The nest is gone. Yes, I like wildlife but not that much!

Today we went to Shaw Nature Reserve today! The weather was just great – it wasn’t real hot here. I think at the most it got up to 80 or 81.

We saw all sorts of cool thing! A butterfly species I’ve not personally seen before, cool little frogs and beautiful prairies!

Over the next several days, I’ll post the pictures – I would start tonight, but – well – we had such a nice time today, and then, after we got back I was in our front yard and got stung by a wasp or something on my little finger and it hurt really bad. Then when I took a shower I noticed little ticks all over my legs. Got a bit distracted by all that and so now its a bit late to post pictures.