First Monarch today!

Today in our garden I saw our first Monarch butterfly for 2013.  I am outside a lot so it is a concern.  We have thousands of milkweed plants on our farm so you would think we would have seen a few before now.  In any case, in the mist of dozens of swallowtails this morning a monarch flew in to check out our coneflowers, late blooming butterfly weed and zinnias.  Below, alone and relunctantly sharing a coneflower with a Great Spangled Fritillary.

This morning several silvery checkerspots were also working the coneflowers.  Their larva food sources are wingstem, asters and black-eyed susans.  All of which are in abundance in this area ... especially wingstem.

A hornworm on one of our tomato plants this morning covered with parasitic braconid wasp larva/cocoons.  

Raining Swallowtails this Week!

Last week, there was an abundance of June Bugs, this week it is raining Swallowtails.  There were dozens out after a wet weekend.  Each of our butterfly plants (also coneflower flower beds) had several butterflies on them.  Many swallowtails, skippers and red admirals.  They were particularly drawn to our white butterfly plants (Buddleia davidii).

Also, Rachel sent me a link to a great video from NPR on butterfly life cycle and butterfly farming.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/07/20/203615890/getting-cozy-with-baby-butterflies-so-cozy-they-whisper-a-wriggly-secret

Below, pictures from yesterday while I was in a garden nearby planting butterfly weed, bee balm and coneflowers.

Black Swallowtail (female).  Queen Anne's Lace is one of the food sources for larva. They are smaller than the other swallowtails.

 Zebra Swallowtail.  I saw a few of these yesterday and they were very active and hard to get a good picture.  This one was resting in the grass.  I had never noticed their pale lime green strips which are often more white later in the summer (of course I am colorblind).  The ones I saw yesterday were smaller that those later seen in the summer.  The local pawpaw trees is a food source for their larva.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (male).  The larva of Eastern Tiger Swallowtails use tulip poplar and wild cherry trees for their food source.  We have many of both.

 Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (female)

Spicebush Swallowtail (female) ... we also have the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail black mimic.  We have a lot of Spicebush Swallowtail because the abundance of sassafras trees and spicebush (an understory bush).

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail taking in nectar from a butterfly plant.

There were as many as twenty swallowtails on this butterfly plant at times.  The Tiger male below is showing some wear.

There were only plenty of skippers out yesterday.  A Silver Spot Skipper below ...  it was a great day to be outside!

Big Bone Lick SP and Chillicothe Paints

I went up to Ohio see my father and sister for a couple of days.  While there and on the way, attended two birthday parties, went to a Chillicothe Paints baseball game,  took pictures at several cemeteries, visited with friends/family and stopped by Big Bone Lick in Boone County KY on our way home.

The Chillicothe Paints team (as in painted pony) is in a development/prospect summer league for collegiate baseball players.  We saw a game against the Richmond River Rats.  One of the players from Richmond was a sophomore from Berea College in Kentucky and he got a double in his only at bat.  It was fun and was "Hotdogs for 10 cents" night ... they sold a few thousand.  I ate a few ...

http://www.chillicothepaints.com/

















Chillicothe is small city is southcentral Ohio on the Scioto River.  Before Europeans arrived was a stronghold for the Shawnee Indian nation. There is a summer play put on each year about Chief Tecumseh in Chillicothe

http://www.tecumsehdrama.com/

 Before the Shawnees,  the Adena and later the Hopewell Indians inhabited the area ... they were mound builders and several significant sites are in the Chillicothe area.

Hopewell Culture - National Historical Site
http://www.nps.gov/hocu/index.htm

Serpent Mound - effigy mound in nearby Adams County
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_Mound





I am about to finish reading "The Species Seekers" by Richard Conniff.  There are lots of accounts of naturalists in the Ohio Valley during the late 1700's and especially the early 1800's.  One place of interest was Big Bone Lick, just south of Cincinnati in Boone County.

Because animals were drawn there for salt and entrapped in the swampy area over hundreds of years, it was an area of interest for naturalist and paleontologists.

"For centuries great beasts of the Pleistocene era came to the swampy land in what is now known as northern Kentucky to feed. Animals that frequented Big Bone Lick included bison, both the ancient and modern variety, primitive horses, giant mammoths and mastodons, the enormous stag-moose, and the ground sloth."      http://parks.ky.gov/parks/historicsites/big-bone-lick/

Lewis and Clark collected bones for Thomas Jefferson at this site. There are several hiking trails,  a small museum and a buffalo herd.

Juniper Hairstreak, Butterflies but ... No Monarchs!

After several days of rain, our pollinators were active today.  Lots of bees of all sorts and our honeybees were working.  Below is a juniper hairstreak on butterfly weed in our garden.  Their larva feed on cedar trees and there is an abundance of those here in Holland.   

This juvenal's dustywing was on one of our butterfly plants.  Their larva feed on oaks. 

There has been an abundance of Easter Tiger Swallowtails this year.  A couple of close shots on butterfly plants in our yard. 

At first I thought the butterfly below was the black female morph of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail above. However, now I am pretty sure it is a pipevine swallowtail.  Still no monarchs or larva ... disappointment!

Bowl and Doily spiders - Frontinella sp.

Around our house and especially near our outdoor lights in shrubbery are dozens of bowl and doily spiders.  They are small, their bodies were a little over an eighth of an inch long. They are easily seen on morning walks on our farm in taller grasses and weeds away from wooded areas when there is dew present.

The webs seemingly is not as organized as other spiders until closer inspection.  The total size of the webbing is about six inches in diameter.  There is a highly organized sheet (see below) of webbing at the bottom of the web that looks like a screen in a door (the doily).  Then an inverted cup or bowl section above this sheet.  It is all suspended by a random support system of webbing. 

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowl_and_doily_spider

"The bowl and doily spider, Frontinella communis, is a species of sheet weaver found in North and Central America. It is a small spider, about 4 mm (0.2 inch) long, that weaves a fairly complex sheet web system consisting of an inverted dome shaped web, or "bowl", suspended above a horizontal sheet web, or "doily", hence its common name. The spider hangs from the underside of the "bowl", and bites through the web small flies, gnats and other small insects that fall down into the non-sticky webbing. The webs are commonly seen in weedy fields and in shrubs, and may often contain both a male and a female spider in late summer - like many linyphiids, Frontinella may cohabitate for some time."

No Monarchs, bumble bees ... Granny is 90!

I have been observing hundreds of milkweed plants in several colonies over the past week and still no monarchs, no eggs and no larva.  I will keep checking, hoping for some second wave butterflies to past by Allen County.

We do have a lot of bumble bees as well as other pollinators on our butterfly weed, butterfly plants, bee balm, cone flowers and other wildflower plantings. The picture below is one of the bumble bees we have visiting bee balm flowers.  Appears to be Bombus pensylvanicus (American bumble bee) but could be Bombus auricomus (Black and Gold Bumble bee) or maybe, Bombus terricola (Yellow banded bumble bee).  All look similar in my identification book.

The passion flower vines (maypop) are blooming and drawing their share of pollinators ... except none on this passion flower.

 
Granny (my wife's mother and teacher in Allen County for 39 years) had her 90th birthday last week.  A picture of the family below and one of some honey we gave out to guests to take home.  Over 250 friends and relatives attended her birthday party and reception.  Granny had a great time visiting many of her former students.