Butterfly Gardening Blog

The wetland area was pretty cool too! Here are a couple pictures of part of it from a distance:

And here are a couple from the area covered with lily pads:

On the way to the wetland area there was a little look-out deck to walk out on. When I went up the stairs – at the top of them – there was the cutest little green froggy! He was adorable!

I haven’t been able to find out what species he is yet either – but I will have to find out. I would love to know what would attract these little guys to our yard!

Here’s a picture of him (or her!) from the front – if you click on the picture to see it bigger you can see a lot more detail:

Next is a picture my husband took of me taking a picture of it and then one I took of my husband taking a picture of the frog. They kind of help with understanding the size and scale of the frog:

Later on I saw another frog about the same size that was kind of brown or bronze in color, unfortunately it wouldn’t sit still for me to get a picture of it!

After that we walked through another prairie area on the way to the wetlands area.

Here are some of the flowers we saw along the way:

Here’s a picture of some butterfly weed (asclepias tuberosa). It seems I can never get a good picture of these blooms – its like they are so bright they overwhelm the camera or something:

Aside from the wooded area, before we went through more prairie we saw a really cool wall they have there. Yes, I know. Walls can only be so cool. And walls have nothing to do with wildlife or butterflies.

It was cool though. It was called a ‘serpentine’ wall. There was a sign saying something like Thomas Jefferson had designed one. I don’t know if this particular wall was based on his design or not. I should have taken a picture of the sign!

Anyway it is supposed to be sturdier. And as the name suggests, its curvy. Kind of like a zig-zag wall – only not pointy – just smooth curves instead. My husband took some pictures of it:

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.

Snapdragons – Antirrhinum majus – are not native to this area but they are a host plant for the buckeye butterfly. I haven’t been able to locate a source for any host plants for this butterfly that are native. Mine have been blooming for a little while now. They start blooming pretty early in the summer and sometimes keep blooming for a long time. I started some new plants from seed this year too and I am hoping that they will bloom later this summer.

Once – I think 2 years ago I actually found a buckeye caterpillar on my plants. If there have been more I missed them. Now don’t quote me on this, I’m a bit rusty with some of my butterfly knowledge – but I believe buckeyes are partial migrators and don’t get up here for a while usually, at least not in large numbers.

My favorite snapdragon flowers are the bright, nearly solid yellow ones and the read dark red ones: