Butterfly Gardening Blog

Today I saw a turkey vulture right behind our house, by the creek. It was huge! Didn’t seem too afraid of me either.

I was able to get one decent picture of it:

I found some baby preying mantis that had just hatched today! I was able to only get a few quick pictures of them before they all started running away. ( you might need to click on the image to see them more clearly)

Here’s the egg sack they came from:

There’s a pond near our house that I stop by sometimes when walking my dog. There are many different birds all around it.

Today, I saw some geese – and a nest with eggs in it!

Here are the eggs:

I don’t know what kind of bird this was:

We saw all sorts of other wildlife while at the Virgin Islands too: reptiles, birds. fish, turtles, etc.

We especially saw lots of iguanas! There were some at the resort we stayed at and we saw a lot at Coral World too.

There were some other lizards there too – I don’t know what species they are. I suspect the one is either the same as those you see in Florida everywhere or at least a similar species:

But then we saw this type too, at Coral World:

Also at Coral World we saw green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) and some Red-Footed Tortoises (Geochelone carbonaria). Red-Footed Tortoises were brought to the Virgin Islands hundreds of years ago from South America.

They also had lorikeets which are nectar-eating birds. I don’t think they are native to the Virgin Islands, but they were really pretty. You could buy little cups of nectar for them and they land all over you to feed!

At St. John we saw this really pretty hermit crab – it was really close to the road and we were afraid it would get ran over. We realized afterward that we had no idea which way it was trying to go so we put it back where we found it:

At Bolongo Bay Beach (where we stayed) we saw some cute little crabs early in the morning running in and out of little holes in the sand. I managed to get one to sit still long enough to get a good picture of it:

Altogether it was a very nice vacation! I hope to go again someday, do some more snorkeling and hopefully see more butterflies!

In addition to the butterflies, we were also lucky to see some other wildlife while visiting The Butterfly Farm at St. Thomas.

Down in a couple of the leaves – of I think the same plant that might be a skipper host plant – we found some tiny little frogs! I don’t how clear it is in this picture, you will probably need to click on it to see the bigger version:

We also saw this really cool spider:

One day at St. John we also saw a large spider – does anyone know – are these both orb weaver spiders?

There is a hummingbird species that is common on the Virgin Islands too. We saw quite a few of them around, but only once, at The Butterfly Farm, was I able to get a picture of one:

I don’t know if there are other hummingbird species on the Virgin Islands or not.

Next week – other reptiles, birds and more that we saw on the Virgin Islands!

The following are what I think were the best photos I got this year – they weren’t all butterflies either!

All together we had a nice day! Of course it was much cooler – now it is 90 something with a heat index of over 100!

After I got home I got stung by a wasp and found a bunch of little ticks on my ankles, but it still didn’t change the fact that we had a nice time earlier.

Hopefully we can go there again sometime when it is a bit cooler!

On the way out, I took this one last picture:

We also saw some cool stuff on some milkweed on the way out. The first were some type of caterpillars that I’ve seen before and were told what they were, but I don’t remember now!

The other is a red beetle that I’ve seen at home too and I’ve been curious about what they are. Any one know?

On the way back from the wetland area when we were walking through the prairie part again we see the weirdest orange stringy stuff growing around the plants in different patches. Anyone know what this stuff is? It doesn’t look like its doing the plants any good. You’ll probably have to click on the pictures to be able to see enough detail of it.

On the way out from the wetland area we saw a big patch of Queen of the Prairie. I wondering if maybe this stuff spreads? I’ve only had my one plant a couple years so I can’t really tell yet.

Then a little while later we were walking along and in the middle of all the green and some yellow now and then, there was a tiny little red flower! I don’t think it was possible to get a picture that shows how cool and pretty it really was in real life. Any one know what the flower is?