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.

In the Backyard

Here are some photos of some random, but interesting things I've seen in the backyard in the past week or so.

My crow family

The juveniles are big enough to feed themselves now, but still try to beg from their parents every once in a while. Sometimes only 4 will show for a day or so and I get worried that one of them may have gotten shot during Minnesota's crow hunting season, but then the next day all 5 are back again and I'm relieved.

Cooper's Hawk sunbathing

I checked with Susan (the raptor expert) to see if she had any opinions about what this Coop was doing and she said she'd never seen any of her Coop's behaving this way. After the hawk flew away, I went out and checked where it had been laying and no ant hills were nearby, so we ruled out "anting." There was also no evidence of a fresh kill in the area, so I think the bird was just trying to cool off a bit on a hot August afternoon.

The backyard wildflower garden/monarch waystation is in full bloom!

Lost of purple coneflowers, but also Joe Pye weed, Canada goldenrod, Queen Anne's Lace, green-headed coneflower, and brown-eyed Susan. It's definitely a butterfly and bee haven.

Common Green Darner (female)

I found this beautiful dragonfly on the swamp white milkweed last week when I was collecting monarch caterpillars. I was really happy she allowed me to get some great photos before flying away.

Newly tagged monarch enjoying her first nectar in the wild

Great Spangled Fritillary on Joe Pye Weed

Hope you're seeing some neat things in your backyard too!

Father's Day Weekend 2009

I hope you all had a nice Father's Day weekend. We had a little rain today, but that didn't ruin our traditional Father's Day picnic at Forestville State Park. It was a good celebration for Dad/Grampy and a fun day for all of us.


Here are some pictures from the backyard. The bluebird babies just hatched and as near as I could tell, all 5 of the eggs hatched. As you can see from this picture, one of the babies is still a little damp from being newly hatched.

The wrens have completed their nest and Mrs. Wren has laid 2 eggs so far. I really like this house that allows me to view the birds via the hinged roof.

Here's a look at the baby chickadees. They're starting to get pinfeathers on their wings and tails. I couldn't find information close at hand to learn how many days until they fledge, but I guess I'd better find out so I know when to watch for these little guys making their way into the real world!

The weather has finally warmed up and according to weather forecasts we're looking at 80's and 90's all next week. The garden is really starting to grow. I'm even starting to see blossoms on many of the plants. Here's one of the tomatoes.

The peas are flowering too.

I'm also starting to see some blossoms in the wildflower garden. This is a Daisy Fleabane.

And the first Purple Coneflower is blooming.

I have one giant Common Mullein plant in my backyard. I read that this plant is a biennial and takes two years to reach maturity. Last year was this plant's first year in my backyard and it got pretty big then, but it's twice as big this year.

I've been waiting and hoping that it will produce a tall flower stalk (birds and insects love them!). On closer inspection when taking this picture, I noticed the beginning of the flower stalk. I can't wait to see how big it gets and look forward to watching birds taking advantage of it this winter.

I'm starting to see a few more butterflies in the backyard and more perennials are starting to bloom too. Here's one of the daylilies.

And this new poppy plant I just planted this spring has lots of flowers on it.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and I hope you all have a good week.

A Backyard Walk With Sophie

Finally we saw the sun for a few short hours this morning (first time since last Friday!) Here's where working part-time is great because Sophie and I got to take advantage of a nice morning and go for a little hike in the backyard. Come on along and I'll show you some of the things we saw.......

In spite of being almost 12 years old, a heart murmur and hind feet with no feeling in them, Sophie still loves to get out and run in the backyard. I don't take her for long walks anymore and she spent the rest of the afternoon napping after this adventure, but I think you can see how much she's enjoying being out here!

There's nothing wrong with Sophie's "sniffer" though. I bet she was smelling a bunneh under this tree.

When we were exploring at the farthest end of our yard, I noticed this fresh deposit of deer droppings.

Very close to where I found these droppings, we have an area of the yard that we've never mowed or done anything else with -- in fact, it's where we dump tree trimmings and other yard waste. It's grown up into a pretty dense thicket, but as you can see below, there's a little path going into this thicket......

and when I followed the path into there, I spotted this fresh deer hoofprint also.

Sophie was checking out all the good scents in there too, but I didn't let her snoop around too much because I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a doe hasn't hidden a fawn or two in that area! Wouldn't that be a real treat to see someday? I'll definitely be keeping a closer watch on this part of the yard now.

I've got quite a few cavity-nesting birds occupying some space in the backyard also. There are three active Tree Swallow nests. This little female Tree Swallow was reluctant to vacate her house, but I wanted to see if her eggs had hatched yet.

Not yet! Just 6 pretty little white eggs in a lovely bed of feathers. I'm always amazed at the variety of feathers the Tree Swallows can find to line their nests. Does anyone know if that stripey feather right down in front is from a hawk? (click on the photo to enlarge it)

I also have Tree Swallows nesting in two of these plastic super gourds, but they place their nests against the back wall of the gourds, so it's impossible to see how many eggs there are and whether they've hatched or not. But I know the nests are still active because I see the swallows going in and out.

Mrs. Chickadee is still sitting on her 5 eggs in this front yard nest box. According to my incubation calculations, there should be baby chickadees hatching by this weekend and I'll keep you posted on any new developments.

I have bluebirds in a nestbox in the backyard too. There was an unsuccessful nesting attempt earlier in the season and I'm not sure what happened, but that nest had been abandoned. Now a new nest with 5 eggs is being tended by the bluebird pair. Another neat thing about this is that I've finally found a nest that incorporates some of the yarn scraps that I put out in the backyard every spring!

Here's a nice shot of Mrs. Bluebird waiting for me and Sophie to get the heck out of her territory!

A quick check on the vegetable garden revealed these broccoli sprouts from the seeds I planted a couple weeks ago.

The garbage can potatoes are doing pretty good too.

Remember the scenes of the wildflower garden that I burned on April 13th?

Here's what it's looking like today. No buds or blossoms yet, but everything has grown back very nicely. With all the rain that we've had recently, once it gets sunny and warms up again, these flowers are really going to take off.

The wild grape vine has really taken over the dead tree in my front yard. Right now it looks there's going to be a good crop of grapes later this summer and the dead tree isn't quite so unsightly now that it's covered with green leaves again.

The house sparrows finally took over the nesting cavity that I showed you in this tree earlier this spring. I wasn't real happy about that, but a windstorm a couple weeks ago blew the top part of the tree off right at that nesting cavity, so the sparrows lost their home anyway. (I'm so glad the bluebirds weren't nesting there when that happened!)

I've got a bumper crop of common milkweed growing next to my driveway this year. I have only seen 1 monarch butterfly in my yard so far this spring, but hopefully when they come back, they'll find this milkweed patch along with several others that are growing in different spots in the yard.

And finally, a couple weeks ago I cleaned out some dead plants and replanted some new perennials in my hummingbird and butterfly garden. One of my new plants is this Foxglove. It's the only one blooming so far, but isn't it pretty?

Thanks for coming along with Sophie and me on this walk.....we had a good time and hope you did too.

A couple of backyard things

I hope everyone had a very happy Easter and had some fun times with friends and family. Mr. Johnson and I headed down to my parents for a family get-together and delicious Easter feast. Thanks again Mom & Dad for a nice afternoon.

We're still enjoying some pretty decent spring weather and although today was overcast and not quite as warm as yesterday, I decided to go out this afternoon and do some more yard clean-up chores. Last week I burned off part of the wildflower patch and since it wasn't very windy and fairly cool this afternoon, I decided to finish burning the rest of the patch. It's been quite a few years since I burned the entire patch, so it was way overdue.
I had the garden hose ready and watered down the grass around the trees and shrubs within the area to be burned so that none of these would get burned. In the center of both pictures you can probably make out my big ol' brushpile. The bunnies and possums live under it and the birds use it to escape from the Cooper's hawk, so I took special precautions to make sure that the brushpile didn't burn either.

I'm glad I got this project finished up today because I just heard on our local evening news that there's now a burning ban on for our area until Friday! Once we get some rain later in the week, this burned area will green up really fast. And I'm hoping that my wildflowers come back rejuvenated and with less weeds.

The other exciting thing in my backyard was revealed to me this afternoon when I came in the house to make supper. Out the kitchen window, I spotted this cute little Brown Creeper -- a first in my backyard! Can you spot the bird in this picture?

Here's a little bit better view.

If it weren't for the bird's white underside, it would be extremely difficult to spot them. They "creep" up the trunk of the tree, using their long, slightly curved beak to excavate beneath loose bark for insects.

Have a good week everybody!