Looking Back on 2014

I got a gentle "scolding" from a friend recently who's been missing my blog posts. So I decided I'd get one more in before the end of 2014. Working two and three jobs for the last few years has pretty much kicked my ass to the curb and left me with neither the energy or initiative to devote to weekly (or even monthly) blog posts. But for those of you not on Facebook or also missing my blog posts, I'll recap my 2014 with one picture for each month of 2014.

A beautiful January sunset

A February snowstorm was beautiful only to those who didn't have to worry about moving all the snow or figuring out how to drive in it! 

In March I took a trip to California to visit my brother.  It was nice to see green grass, water that wasn't frozen, and birds that wouldn't be back to Minnesota for a couple months yet.

April brought a few spring birds back to Minnesota, including this Robin who was determined to battle that "other" robin taunting him from the window reflection.

In May the colorful summer birds finally arrived.  They're the hope we hold in our thoughts and hearts during the long Minnesota winter.

Backyard critters enjoying June clover and other treats falling from the birdfeeder above.

A long July weekend in northern Minnesota gave me the opportunity to photograph this rainbow over Snowbank Lake after a brief late afternoon thunderstorm.

 

Thankfully we saw more Monarch butterflies this summer than last year.  An August Monarch took advantage of the Rough Blazing Star blooming in my backyard wildflower garden.

In September, this first year Cooper's Hawk was trying its best to catch one of the birds hanging out on my deck.  Unfortunately, no birds were caught, but I did get the chance to capture this awesome photo!

Fall colors delighted the senses in October.

Early one morning in November, this small buck showed up in the backyard to sample some of the corn we put out for birds and bunnies.



Happy Christmas from me and my pretty girl Holly the Pibble!

Monarch Ranch Update

Three monarch butterflies hatched in the monarch ranch this morning. This brings my current total to 25 (finally!)
It's been a disappointing season for my monarch ranch. Last year by this time, I had released my last monarch, with a total of 50 tagged. This year it's taken me since July 26th to reach a total of 25.

The biggest thing I'm seeing this year is that fully one-third of all the caterpillars I've brought in from outside have been victims of a parasite. Some of them have died before they even have the chance to turn into a chrysalis and at least 6 have died in the chrysalis. I'm not even seeing that many monarch butterflies in the wild so that meant I had a tough time even finding eggs on the milkweed leaves in my yard this year.

I'm not sure whether other people are experiencing the same problems with monarchs or not. I've heard from some other blogger friends that they aren't seeing the numbers of butterflies (of any species) like they have in previous years, so I'm wondering whether this is a nationwide problem and what are the influencing factors: climate change, drought, pesticide use, habitat loss, or a combination of all those? If any of you hear or see anything about this, please let me know. Thanks

Butterflies

Ruthie's 2011 Monarch Ranch officially opened this afternoon! After last year's successful monarch ranch, I'm hoping to double my monarchs raised, tagged and released from 50 to 100! To facilitate that, I recently purchased a larger monarch caterpillar enclosure (on the left). So now the smaller one with the pink lid will be my monarch nursery (already containing the 7 leaves with eggs and 2 baby caterpillars that I found earlier this afternoon).
I also purchased a small, collapsible "Port-A-Bug" carrier for collecting the monarch caterpillars and eggs in the backyard, and a large, collapsible mesh butterfly house for when the monarch butterflies hatch and need space to spread their wings before release outdoors. Good thing I have a large kitchen counter!

Here are the 2 little caterpillars I was lucky to find today -- this one is newly hatched! I was lucky to spot this tiny critter. This isn't a very clear picture, but the orange circle shows where the caterpillar is -- the black spot is its head.

Here's a little bit larger (first instar) caterpillar. I think the dark spot on its middle might be part of a shed skin.

I went out to the wildflower garden in the backyard to see if I could get some photos of monarch butterflies -- I'm just starting to see them more frequently in the backyard. There are thousands of beautiful flowers blooming right now in the backyard and the majority of them are purple coneflowers. The fragrance is wonderful and it's a magnet for butterflies and bees.

I stood at the edge of the flowers waiting for some cooperative butterflies to land on the flowers, but was momentarily distracted when this little female hummingbird landed on a branch just above me. Hello lovely hummer!

I was thrilled to see this beautiful Tiger Swallowtail fly into the garden. Wow! This one must have been newly hatched because its wings were in good shape and colors were very brilliant.

Still no monarchs checking out the flowers, but this handsome Red Admiral flew in to sip some nectar.

And there were plenty of honeybees buzzing around too.

There are so many flowers out here that every insect should be able to find its own, but that didn't stop this honeybee from attempting to move in on a Red Admiral. (In case you're wondering, the Red Admiral chased that little bee away!)

Walking around the outside edge of the garden, I also spotted these 2 spiders on a small web woven between 2 Queen Anne's Lace stalks. I could exactly figure out what was going on here (it's either spider sex or one of the spiders is dead and becoming a meal for the other spider)

(you can click on this photo to enlarge it and see what you can figure out!)

That's all for now. I'll be sharing monarch ranch updates as they become available.

Birding Close to Home

Yesterday afternoon we took advantage of the summer-like weather to visit Root River Park, a new county park about 5 miles from where we live.
In case you're wondering, this park has also become the new home of a certain very large raccoon.....

The park had a nice parking area, a handicapped accessible porta-potty, and nice, wide mowed paths. I don't know how many acres the park is or how many miles of trails there are, so I'll have to do some research into that. I do know that it's a great birding area with trails bordering forest edges, through the woods, along the riverbank and through grasslands, so there were ample opportunities for us to see many different things. As we were walking down the trail into the woods, I saw a larger bird ahead, skulking through the branches of a small cedar tree. At first I thought maybe a brown thrasher, but a look through the binocs showed a much darker brown color. I walked a little bit closer and the bird flushed into some overhead branches. Awesome! A cuckoo! Now, will it sit still long enough for me to get a good look so I can determine whether it's a yellow-billed or black-billed?

What do you think? I went with Black-Billed Cuckoo on this one. I used my birdJam to play a few calls and got this cuckoo to fly to another branch with less cover. Definitely a good way to start the afternoon!

The bird never vocalized, but we did have the chance to see it again in the same area on our way out, so I'm wondering if it doesn't have a partner and they're nesting in the park.

The trail wound down the hill to the river bottom and we could hear several Common Yellowthroats singing. Again the birdJam was put into use and this male came over to investigate the intruder in his territory. I was fortunate enough to snap this one pretty good picture as he sat still for a nanosecond!

A few yards farther down the trail and I heard a distinctive "bee-buzz" from one of the trees to my left. Aw man, Blue-Winged Warbler! I've heard them, but never gotten a good look at one before. A quick scroll through the menu to Blue-Winged Warbler on the birdJam and after only a few calls, this handsome male flew in to chase away the intruder in his territory also.

From this dead branch, I got a really good photo op, so I just pressed the button and the continous shooting feature did the rest......

a great flight shot, showing his bright yellow underneath and the white sides of his tail.

Look out! It's a Blue-Winged Warbler dive bomb!

I spotted this male Eastern Bluebird sitting on the top of an old dead tree stump in the middle of a pasture. He was keeping an eye on the nestbox which was located about 50 yards away.

At the edge of the Root River, we had fun watching this female Baltimore Oriole enjoy a bath.
There was a small rock just barely submerged under the water and just deep enough for her to be able to get under the water and make some big splashes.

She spent quite a bit of time there until she was pretty much soaked, and then she flew off to a sunny branch just above this river bank.

There were plenty of wildflowers blooming along the trail edges too. Here are a few:

Wild Blue Phlox

Golden Alexander

Wild Mint

Columbine

Huge patch of blue phlox along the riverbank (this picture is my desktop wallpaper)

Wild Geranium

We wondered how this White Pine grew as large as it was with its roots right at the edge of the rocky bluff......

Also saw this beautiful Mourning Cloak butterfly. I've never noticed the "eyes" on its wings before........

This was a great park and I'm looking forward to visiting it again to explore some of the other trails. Root River Park will definitely be at the top of my "must visit" birding list during next spring's warbler migration.

OMG!!

Here's what I saw in the monarch ranch when I got up at 4:45 this morning.......9, count 'em, 9 chrysalis have turned black because there's a monarch butterfly in there ready to emerge!

And here are the 9 beautiful new monarch butterflies that greeted me when I got home from work this afternoon!

I will be using my last 9 monarch tags when I release these butterflies this afternoon, for a total of 50 monarch butterflies tagged and released this summer! This is a new personal best for me and more than doubles my totals from the previous 2 seasons of operating a monarch ranch. I'm already planning to purchase a larger enclosure and expanding my monarch ranching operations for next summer. 75 sounds like a really good number, don't you think? (tags can only be purchased in lots of 25)

Sadly, this concludes another season of monarch ranching. It will be strange to not have monarchs sitting on the kitchen counter anymore, since they've been taking up so much of my time at home for the past couple months. But, it gives me something to plan for and look forward to for next summer. I'm already collecting milkweed seeds from plants in my backyard to start new seedlings next spring and figuring out where and how to expand milkweed plantings to encourage and accomodate more monarch activity in the backyard.

I strongly encourage any of you who are interested to try monarch ranching. I think you'll find it a fun and rewarding activity for a minimal $$ investment. I'll even send you seeds if you want to try growing your own milkweed plants! "Try it, you'll like it!"

Monarch Milestone

Today marked a milestone in my monarch ranching experience -- 6 monarch butterflies hatched and released on the same day!!

Two were already hatched by 6 AM this morning when I left for work and the rest emerged during the morning. So they were really fluttery and anxious to fly by the time I got home early this afternoon. Since I don't tag them until I get outside in the backyard, I decided to take a chance and open the ranch to see if I could get photos of all 6 butterflies.

Not to worry.......I did manage to capture the escaped monarch behind my computer desk and he was released unharmed out in the backyard.

Today's butterflies increases the total of monarchs raised, tagged and released from this summer's monarch ranch to 37! Initial observations show that at least 4 more monarchs will emerge tomorrow. With the monarchs still to emerge in the ranch and including the 4 wild monarch butterflies I caught and tagged last week, I should be able to achieve my goal of tagging 50 monarch butterflies this year by Labor Day.