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

Dad's Memorial Bench

Here's a look at the memorial bench we're going to put up for my Dad. Mom got the memorial dollars totalled up, I finally got the wording right that all my family members could agree on, chose 5 possible locations for placement around the St. John's property to present in a proposal to the trustees. Amazingly, the church trustees were able to approve one of those spots in only 3 days, and we were free to move ahead with this project. I visited Bill at the memorial company yesterday, signed the agreement and gave him the deposit. Hopefully, before the end of September, this bench will be in place near the school where my Dad influenced so many lives for the past 50 years. Hopefully the people who sit on this bench and were Dad's students or worked with Dad will have some good stories and memories to share with each other or their own kids and grandkids.

Love you and miss you Dad! You can bet I'll take my turn sitting on this bench and remember some of the interesting and fun stories of having you for a teacher too!

Midwest Birding Symposium Update

By now you probably know that I'll be attending the Midwest Birding Symposium in Lakeside, Ohio in just a little over 3 weeks. I'm also one of the lucky few chosen to be an "Official Blogger" at the Symposium. I'm really looking forward to this road trip with my best birding friend Lynne (also chosen as an Official Blogger). And if any of you have any good tips on the best way to get through the Chicago expressway system with a minimum or stress and/or profanity, please share them with me in the comments.

It looks like there's a multitude of fun activities and events planned for attendees at the Midwest Birding Symposium, but did you know there's going to be a raffle too? I understand that the money collected for raffle tickets goes to benefit a variety of birding, conservation and natural resource groups. I checked with the folks in charge of the symposium to see if they were still looking for raffle items and if they'd be interested in any of my handmade fiber treasures. The answer was "Yes!" So for those of you who are attending the symposium, please be sure to register to win one of these following items I'm donating:

8-Pointed Star-Shaped Ripple Afghan

Stripes are Pink Camo and Cafe Au Lait

I'm still crocheting on this one -- it's about half done and already pretty large. It will definitely be big enough to cover an adult -- probably even an adult and her small dog or cat!

It's 100% acrylic plus machine washable and dryable.

Lace Shawl

Knitted with silk/wool yarn and adorned with beads on the entire shawl

(click on the photo to enlarge)

Included with the shawl is this adorable copper shawl pin in the shape of a little birdie (from my personal collection)

Haven't registered for the Midwest Birding Symposium yet? No worries because there's still time and space available. If you think you can make it to the festival this year, I even have a discount code for you to use. Mention MBS2011BB25 on your registration to take advantage of the group discount rate.

Hope to see you there and if you can't make, check in with the Nature Knitter blog on Sept. 16-18 to get all the latest news from this "Official Blogger."

County Fair Results

For the first time in many years, I entered some of my knitting projects for open class competition at the Olmsted County Fair. The entry process can be done totally on-line now, so that really streamlined things on entry day. I was kind of disappointed last year when I went to the fair and saw that there really weren't many handknitting projects entered in the fair. I thought with all the people that seem to be knitting these days that there would have been much more, but maybe people just don't do that anymore? So I decided that this year I would try raising the competition bar a bit by entering a few of the items I've finished in the past year. Here are the results of my fair entries and I've included the judges comments that were attached.

Gray Wool Mittens

"Nicely done. Decreases accentuate linear look. Warm, interesting cuff design."

Fair Isle Tam

"Colors work well together. Even floats inside."

If you're not a knitter and wonder what "even floats" mean, she's referring to the color not in use that's carried along the backside of the knitting project. If you're ever with a knitter and that person picks up a colorwork garment and turns it inside out, this is what we're looking at.....

Blue Swirly Cable Hat

"Interesting cables, shaping and cables work well together. Yarn accentuates cables."

Baltic Style Mittens

"Nice Braided Cuff. Interesting color combinations with muted and bright. Warm material. Even stitches and floats, nicely done."

Norwegian Wedding Gloves

"Exquisite! Yarn choice accentuates the lace. Great job, no finger gap, workmanship is superb."

Was awarded the burgundy "Honorable Mention" ribbon on these also. I've never seen or received this ribbon before, so I'm not sure if it's something new or what the deal is with it exactly.

Batik Shawl (knitted with 100% alpaca yarn)

"Love interplay of cables and lace, interesting to look at -- even the back is interesting. Very even, lovely piece."

I love the interplay of cables and lace on this pattern also -- one of the main reasons why I chose to knit this shawl, and it earned me the Reserve Grand Champion award!

Of all the years I've entered projects at the fair, this is the only time that I can remember receiving blue ribbons on everything. I was pretty happy about that. One year (sometime back in the '80s) I did get a Grand Champion ribbon and trophy on a large lace knitted shawl, so this year's reserve grand champion ribbon was pretty exciting too.

On all of my judges comments, the following statement was included: "Thanks for sharing your talent with Olmsted County." I hope that seeing my knitting projects at the fair will inspire and encourage other knitters in Olmsted County to think about entering their projects in the fair next year.

(I apologize for the poor color on these photographs -- I took the pictures late last nite under artificial light so they look pretty crappy.)

The Wren Family

Underneath my deck, I have a little wren house (shaped like a mailbox). Every year since I put it up, the wrens have had a family there.
Since there's no way to look inside, I have no idea how many babies are squished in there, but I do know there are at least two.

And they're very noisy babies!
All day, every day, Mr & Mrs Wren spend every waking hour searching my backyard for bugs to feed these noisy babies. Sometimes they find bugs in the garden......

They perch on the clothesline before feeding the bugs to the babies (because their house is right below the clothesline).

But they really like to perch on the edge of the hanging basket holder that's right next to their house.

Their babies hear them chirping when they fly home with a bug and since those babies are always starving(!) the parents never get a rest.....

"More please, NOW, Mom!" ("Sigh," thinks mom)

During my photo session yesterday afternoon, one of the wren parents arrived with this epic-sized grub!

Let's see how the baby likes this treat......

Mom obviously considering whether to eat this tasty morsel herself or try to fit it in Junior's beak.

OK, let's try it again.......open WIDE!

Much wider, please!
That's good, you've almost got it!

OK, now get ready to swallow.......are you ready? I'm going to let go.

Oh No! YOU DROPPED IT!!

And Mrs. Wren goes back to searching for more insect treats in the backyard.

Watching these birds feed the insects they find is the main reason for never using pesticide sprays of any sort in my backyard. Having once inadvertently killed a family of bluebirds by spraying tent caterpillars with Raid, I learned a difficult (and valuable) lesson. Now I rely on the birds to do all the insect control work in my backyard and they seem to be managing the job very nicely.

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.

Woodpeckers!

I have more woodpeckers at house this summer than I can ever remember before! Mostly Downys and many of them juveniles. This is a photo I took this morning -- featuring 5 Downys and 1 male Red-Bellied. What you can't see in this photo are 3 more Downys hanging onto the spindles of the deck railing below this photo! I have to refill this log every other day (it holds 1 suet cake). I also added another peanut feeder to a hook at the other side of the deck.

Another "first" for this year is a juvenile Red-Bellied Woodpecker at the feeders. The adults were occasional visitors all winter but have been showing up at the feeders more regularly this spring. Then one day not too longer I spotted their youngster at the peanut feeder. This little guy is perfectly capable of getting his own food, but I was thrilled to capture this series of photos from my dining room window earlier this morning. "Dad" came to the suet feeder while "Junior" just happened to be perched on the deck railing. What follows is the only interaction I've seen this summer between this Red-Bellied Woodpecker adult and baby.

"Hey Dad, is that for me?"

"Hurry! I'm so hungry!"
"Nom, Nom, Nom!"

Do woodpeckers have saliva??

Gag!

"OK, is that enough?" Dad asks

"Please sir, I want some more!"

Dad's thinking, "Hey look, peanuts!"

Midwest Birding Symposium

Have you ever been to a birding festival? I've been to a few and enjoyed them very much. That's why in a couple of months I will be heading over to Lakeside, Ohio with my best birding friend Lynne, for the Midwest Birding Symposium. This will be the first time either of us have attended this festival, but because it's billed as "the world's friendliest birding event" we're looking forward to haveing a great time AND seeing some great birds!

We'll be meeting up with several of our birding/blogger/Facebook friends there -- some of whom I've never actually met in person before, but looking forward to this chance to meet and bird with them. If you're interested in attending this festival, registration information can be found at this link. Early bird registraion ends today (July 15th), but even if you don't have a chance to decide and sign up today, I would still encourage you to take advantage of "Ruthie's group discount code" if you're registering for the entire weekend (GROUPCODE MBS2011BB25). I've heard the meals are going to be fantastic too!