Gardeing Tips

The first thing I saw when I walked out the back door this afternoon to look for bugs was two butterflies racing across the backyard. I think they were both swallowtails, but since they were flying about twenty feet up, and at least that far away from me, that is the best I can do for identification; there are quite a few species of swallowtails. One was yellow, and bigger (at least, it looked that way from where I was, in those seconds I had to observe a flying insect from a distance), that one was in the lead; the other was smaller (obviously) and a dark color. They could both have been eastern tiger swallowtails. The male eastern tiger swallowtail is yellow and black, but the female could be yellow and black, or black and blue. Anyway, they raced by and made me smile. Butterflies are like that. One thing I find both interesting and annoying about eastern swallowtails is that they spend most of their time up in trees, and fly really high. So I hardly ever get a good look at one, much less a picture. I did once, though, get some really good shots of one feeding on milkweed. Gee, milkweed is such an attractive flower. And by attractive, I mean it attracts a lot of things, especially butterflies. More people should plant milkweed in their yards...

Speaking of planting nice things in your yard...

 This year we planted four mountain laurel bushes on our property. There is a part of our yard that is woods, but it has a lot of invasive plants as understory, and that is a situation we don't want, so as part of our attempt to eradicate the invasives, we have planted this native shrub in the hopes that it will crowd out the bad plants. This is a long-term plan, obviously. Mountain laurel is our state flower, and an evergreen (nothing like a pine, if that is what you are picturing). One of the four bushes has buds on it, and will hopefully be flowering soon. It's tough to find mountain laurel to plant - it is basically a wild plant, and all you can find in garden centers is rhododendrons, which are a relative. But I wanted the real deal. However, you can't just dig them up in the woods, as that would be illegal, and they wouldn't have such a great chance of survival. It has been a quandary for years, until I found out that our state DEEP has a plant sale every spring, selling native plants that have been cultivated to help with reforesting with natives instead of invasives. The last two years I missed the sale, but this year I got my act together and got my four bushes. My current plan is to plant more every year for the next few years. My vision is a wood full of beautiful, evergreen, native plants that will be attractive for us and for wildlife, instead of a lot of invasives (most of which have thorns. What's that all about?).

Speaking of invasives, while I'm being a bit preachy, don't plant Japanese barberry. If you have it, dig it out. In addition to being invasive, it apparently promotes the life cycle of deer ticks, and being an invasive plant, doesn't have animals to keep it in check, so the more Japanese barberry, the more disease-carrying ticks. And no one wants that.

There are baby wrens in one of the bird houses.

 I haven't seen them, but I hear them whenever the parents come with food. Usually if I am in that part of the yard the parent birds, if they are in the house, will fly away instantly. But today something weird happened. I walked past the house (about ten feet away) with the watering can to water the mountain laurel (because they're in the woods, I can't reach them with the hose, so I have to lug the watering can out there to water them. This is why I am constantly doing a rain dance. And since the rain dance doesn't work, I tell myself that it is good exercise to lug twenty pounds of water across the yard a couple of times a day. But I digress), one of the birds was poking its head out of the house, watching me. It was still there when I walked back to refill the watering can. I didn't think it was worthwhile, but instead of filling the can I went in the house, changed the lens on the camera and went back out, and sure enough, the bird was still there. Ultimately I was able to get pretty close to the house before it flew out. It was strange.

 Then once it flew out, it went back to its usual behavior of scolding me for existing in its domain.

 I went back to watering my plants, but when I walked by again, the bird was in the house, watching again. So, I went back for the camera. None of these pictures are that good because it was quite dark in that part of the yard at that time (darker than it looks in the pictures), so it was hard to focus. As to why the pictures are slanted, I have no idea why I did that...

Another bird...

 The hummingbirds have a route they fly over my yard, and it often includes a layover in this dead tree.

 See the little flash of red at the throat of the ruby throated hummingbird?

Backyard Bug of the Day:

A friend says this is a striped cucumber beetle. My books won't confirm that, but at least it's a name. And as it is on the invasive multiflora rose, and not my cucumbers in the garden, I really don't care, it's a good looking bug.

Random Bugs:

 I think this is a thrips.

 Bad picture, but I am including it because the thrips was photobombed. I don't know what the other thing is - it might be a different kind of thrips, or it might be a springtail. To get a sense of the size of these, those are on the center of a daisy. Have you ever looked at how tiny those things (I should know what they are called, but I don't...) are at the center of daisy?

 Some sort of hopper nymph.

 Sharpshooter

 Weevil, playing dead

 This might be something called a shining leaf chafer, a kind of beetle, subfamily Rutelinae, genus Anomala*. I don't really know what that means, except that it is a beetle.

 Caterpillar, blending in.

 I really wish this was in the borrowed caterpillar book I currently have in my possession, but it's not.

Caterpillar Close-ups:

 Why did I take a picture of the back end of this looper caterpillar? Because it's the only end that would cooperate. Also, if it had a long tail this could totally be a Brontosaurus. In fact, I am right now pretending that it does have a long tail, but you can't see it because it is curved around to the other side of the Brontosaurus. And that is not the edge of a leaf, it is the top of the hill. Yep. Brontosaurus.

 Or looper. Whatever.

 Tree hopper with red eye. Never seen that before.

I opened the window this evening for some fresh air, but eventually it got too fresh, or rather, cold, so I closed it. Since we have what I think are called awning windows, that crank outward, the screen is on the inside, so any insect on the screen gets trapped when I close the window. One of those trapped was a firefly:

 It didn't light up while it was there, but I did catch a glimpse of the lighting up part when it did a wing flex. Sorry it's out of focus.

 Also trapped were a couple of craneflies that were really annoyed to be trapped, so I had to open the window again because the buzzing was annoying me. They didn't fly out, but they stopped buzzing, so right now I am just putting up with the chilly air for the quiet. Well, not really quiet, because there are crickets chirping away outside the window, but those are not annoying like the wing-beating of the irritated craneflies.

 *Information gleaned from Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America.

 Arachnid Appreciation:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

 This a cool find. Our picnic table umbrellas has been closed up recently because of all the wind, but I ate my lunch outside today, so I opened the umbrella. While I was eating I happened to look up and spot this. I've never seen this before - a bold jumping spider (that is its species, I am not making a comment on its personality as an individual) under a film of silk with a blob that I am assuming is an egg sac. The spider was pretty huge for a bold jumping spider, from my limited observation. She was definitely alive - she turned around a few times in there. I'll have to keep an eye on this...