Chrysalis Stage

I'm halfway to Monarch butterflies! Yesterday when I got home from work, I noticed my largest caterpillar was in the process of crawling towards the ceiling of his home.

I had to leave the house around 4:00 for the Rochester Flower and Garden Club tour (highlights and picture of that in tomorrow's post) and didn't get home till almost 9:30.

Upon returning home, I found that the caterpillar had managed to secure himself to the top of the house and was starting to assume the "J" position.

When I got up this morning, I noticed one of the other smaller caterpillars had also started its move to the top.

When I got home from work this afternoon, I found a completed chrysalis. Isn't it beautiful?

(OK, I admit it's kind of a crappy picture taken through the plastic cover, but I still think it's beautiful!)

The other caterpillar is also in the process of creating its secure attachment to enable the building of the chrysalis, so by the end of the day tomorrow, I should have another monarch chrysalis on my ranch.

The rest of the caterpillars are still munching away on their milkweed leaves and growing like crazy. I'll have to start looking for more little caterpillars and eggs tomorrow.

Monarch Ranch II went down to the campground for the weekend with my office mate. I'll be interested to find out how she did with that on Monday.

More Monarch Ranching

I averted a near disaster last night. The dogs woke me up to go outside around midnight and when I walked into the kitchen to look out and see if any critters were at the ground feeding tray, I caught Miss Penny up on the counter trying to break into the monarch ranch. She had pushed the screen partially out of the lid to the inside of the box. I could barely get her away from there. I'm not sure what caused her to act this way, because she really hasn't paid any attention to it sitting on the counter since last week when I set everything up. Perhaps it's because the caterpillars are getting bigger now and she could hear them munching or crawling around in there. Or perhaps it's just because she's a cat and she can do whatever she wants!

Anyway, no damage was done and I was able to make the late-night repairs before heading back to dreamland.

Here are some photos of the progress.

Monarch Ranch I - population: 7

Big Guy & Little Guy

My largest caterpillar. I'm hoping he'll decide to pupate by the weekend.

I was telling my office mate about my monarch ranch and we decided that we should also have a monarch ranch at the workplace.

So this afternoon, I created Monarch Ranch II. I have some big glass jars that Dad gave me several years ago and I actually found them right away out in the garage. I added some pine shavings to the bottom and a stick, then out to the yard to try and find more caterpillars. I searched several of my milkweed patches and was able to only find one small caterpillar and a couple of eggs, but that's a good start, I think.

It's going to be fun to have these little guys in our office and hopefully we'll be able to raise a few more Monarch butterflies. I'll have to take a little walk around the prairie area at work again and see if I can find some more "stock" for this workplace ranch.

The Squirrel Nutbox

This metal nutbox is another one of my "sale" items purchased while I was a Wild Birds Unlimited employee. Even though there were no squirrels visiting my yard two years ago when I mounted this box to a tree, I was reasonably certain that some day I would have some squirrels intelligent enough to figure out how to use this cute little feeder

Earlier this spring, one squirrel began showing up regularly. I noted (from close scrutiny through binoculars) that this squirrel was a female who was feeding little ones. I started putting some pecans in the shell out in the ground feeding tray and she would come and bury all those nuts in the yard.


Well, lo and behold, several weeks later, some more squirrels started showing up. They were gray squirrels, a little smaller than my regular visitor, and I assumed they were her children.


Then I got curious....what if I put some peanuts in the nutbox on the tree? Will they figure it out? Maybe I'll put some on the outside porch and then a few inside to see what happens?

Those nuts were there for a few days and then one day I checked after work and all the nuts were gone with only shell debris on the ground below. Oh cool, I thought, they've figured it out.

Then I started filling it with the pecans plus peanuts in the shell.
Of course I was at work all day, but one Saturday when I was out pulling some weeds, I heard the little metal lid go "clink." Sure enough, there was a squirrel sitting on the front porch.


Some of the squirrels are a little possessive of the nutbox, so sitting on top of the lid prevents any other squirrels from getting inside!


Now I know those of you with squirrel infestation problems are probably just shaking your heads and saying, "Ruthie, you don't know what you're getting into," and maybe some day I will regret encouraging these squirrels, but for now, they seem to be behaving themselves and if they get in too much mischief, I just let the dogs out to remind them not to get too comfortable around here. (Of course, they're much too quick for my dogs to catch, but everyone gets a little thrill for a few minutes!)

And really, why would I want to give up such entertaining sights as these?



In case you're wondering what that orange cord is, it's an extension cord I've got plugged in to a light that's secured to a branch in the tree. The light's on a dusk-to-dawn timer and shines on the ground feeding tray under the tree....to illuminate any nighttime critters (deer, foxes, and raccoons) that might happen to be visiting when I get up in the middle of the night to take the dogs out.

Back to Normal

Well, here it is Monday again...back to work after 3 and 1/2 days off. (very large sigh!) My brother and his family have gone back to California. My mom says it's so quiet at their house now she can hardly stand it. Her poor kitty is walking around the house, meowing and trying to find Charlie to come play with him.

Even though it was a busy and fun weekend, it was kind of good to settle back into the normal routine, you know the stuff--washing clothes, cooking supper, picking out some new books at the library, watching my birds, etc.

I spotted this female Rose-Breasted Grosbeak at the feeder right outside my dining room window. They are pretty secretive in my yard and I was happy to see and photograph at least part of her this afternoon.

I became a new "Guppy Parent" over the weekend. My friend Squirrel at work raises guppies and he's been trying to get me to take some for several months. He brought in 6 fancy guppies and a plecostamus last Friday, so I ran in to work on my motorocycle to pick them up....probably the only time these guppies ever had a motorcycle ride!

They seem to be doing well, but hungry all the time and Squirrel said he fed them 2-3 times per day, so I guess that's how they've been trained.

Now if you think photographing birds or butterflies is hard....try guppies. I bet it took me almost 10 minutes to get these 2 somewhat usable photos.

Just Butterflies

I visited the Minnesota Zoo yesterday with my brothers and nephew. During our visit we took a walk through their butterfly exhibit. Here are some highlights.

Outside the exhibit they had these large and beautiful butterflies (kites?) hanging from the ceiling.

I think this one was called a Blue Wing.

Spicebush Swallowtail

Queen

Pipevine Swallowtail

Zebra Longwing

Giant Swallowtail

This is another longwing - Julia Heliconian

Common Buckeye

Another of the longwings - Erato Heliconian

One more of the longwing butterflies - Banded Orange Heliconian

The exhibit also featured moths, but we saw only this Luna Moth on the ceiling screen.

More information on butterflies may be found at Butterflies and Moths of North America

My Monarch "Ranch"

Here's a look at my "budget" monarch ranch which opened on Thursday (7/12/07).

It's a covered lasagna pan which comes in a package of 2. I cut an opening in the top cover and then covered the hole with nylon window screen material. I filled the bottom of the pan with pine shavings (used for pet bedding) and also put in a little stick, so the caterpillars can crawl to the top when it's time to make a cocoon.


On Thursday morning I started searching for monarch caterpillars and eggs. I found 1 milkweek leaf with a very tiny caterpillar on it and also a second leaf with 2 eggs.

Yesterday I found another leaf with a much larger caterpillar and 2 more leaves each with a single egg (1 egg was ready to hatch because it was very dark when I found it).

Just to the left of the center vein of this leaf are 2 really tiny (just-hatched-today) caterpillars: one is the little dark bar up near my index finger and the other is the little dark bar between my thumb and index finger.

Now all of the eggs have hatched and I have varying sizes of caterpillars in my ranch.

This is one of the little ones I found on Thursday....it's doubled in size since then!

I'm fortunate to have a large supply of common milkweed leaves right outside the door, so there's a ready supply of food available for these hungry little guys. Did you know they also like to eat the blossoms?

I found this little guy yesterday eating one of the blossoms, so I picked a few more for him today and it looks like he did a good job eating most of what I put in for him.

I learned from Birdchick's blog (on June 18th) about parasitic insects laying their eggs in the larger caterpillars, so to try and avoid this, I'm trying to find as many as I can that are still very tiny or even the unhatched eggs.

Watch for periodic updates on the progress of my monarch ranch.

Thursday Surprises & Fun

The Spousal Unit and I took a half-day off today (when you start at 5:30 you get to leave work at 9:30--how great is that?)

I had a few things around the yard that I wanted to get done before the family arrived for pictures at 3:15. One of the main things was to clean out my little pond. The water had gotten so dirty you couldn't even see the fish anymore! So I pulled on my rubber gloves and dragged the wet/dry vac to the backyard (since my pond is pretty small it's a fairly quick job). I got a really good surprise when I was filling it up and put the little potted aquatic plant back in the water....

This little frog is living in my tiny pond! I've never had frogs before, so I don't know if he was living in the plant when I got it or if he hopped over from somewhere else. Whatever the reason, I was pretty excited about it.

I was also surprised at how much the fish had grown since May when I put them back out in the "wild."

I remembered to add a capful of pond clarifier when I filled it, in an effort to try and stay ahead of algae build-up this time around.

It's nice and cool again (70's for highs during the day) so the air is turned off and the windows are open. While I was sitting at my computer and checking e-mail, I heard an unusual-sounding plane flying over. I dashed out to the deck with binoculars and camera, trying to get a visual and here's what I managed to photograph (my third surprise of the day):

According to our newspaper, it's a B-17 Bomber. Have you ever heard one of those? There is a very distinctive low roar of their engines. Whenever I hear them (which isn't too often anymore) I think of what it must have been like during WWII hearing them leave the bases in Britain and then flying over Europe.

The EAA Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin is celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the US Air Force the last weekend in July, and this plane is enroute to that event. When Brother Phil was in the Air Force, I had the good fortune of being able to schedule a couple vacations that coincided with air shows at bases he was stationed at. I really enjoy seeing military aircraft and need to try and figure out if there's a way I can get over to Oshkosh later this month.

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The family picture was a lot of fun. It was a bit windy, but it's always that way at our house. It was really fun to have everyone together and all dressed up.

Brother Dave, Charlie and Spousal Unit discussing "guy stuff"

My Sissy and her 2 girls

Brother Phil working as a human "sun filter" to keep those bright rays out of the photograph--good thing you're tall, Phil!

Wow, Phil, I think you're pretty good at that. If UP ever lets you go, your next career may be in film!

Mom and Dad with the 3 grandkids.

Me and my siblings (with Charlie, that little camera hog!)

And last here's me, the Spousal Unit, Charlie and Brother Dave.

What a fun day to have the family together. Mom brought all the wedding photo albums to our anniversary celebration supper. We had great conversation and lots of laughs.

Wednesday Variety

Here are the first zucchini from my garden--finally! This is an actual, unretouched photograph. They really were this shiny and beautiful when I picked them!

I also finished weeding the garden this afternoon. It's not completely weed free, but at least you can see the soil again now. I ran the sprinkler early this morning, so the soil was soft and easy to dig up this afternoon. Everything looks pretty good, but I think I need to invest in some organic fertilizer to help boost these plants a little bit--especially my poor little pepper plant in the lower right hand corner of the photo.

While weeding, I was serenaded by a House Wren who is establishing a home in the little mailbox house under my deck.

Here's a rearview shot of this tiny songster as he tries to evade me and my camera. I'm always amazed at how much sound comes out of such a little bird.

That reminds me, we found a nest box of just-hatched house wren babies this evening. Oh my, they are so tiny--not much bigger than a cricket! When I opened the box, their little beaks automatically open up for food, even though they can't even hold up their head.

Brother Phil and his family arrived from California late this afternoon. Here's my nephew Charlie. He will be 5 next week. After the initial 5 minutes of shyness, he got up to speed with all of us.

We all went out to supper together at a little restaurant near the Rochester Airport. It's really great to see them again.