Butterfly Gardening Blog

The wetland area was pretty cool too! Here are a couple pictures of part of it from a distance:

And here are a couple from the area covered with lily pads:

On the way to the wetland area there was a little look-out deck to walk out on. When I went up the stairs – at the top of them – there was the cutest little green froggy! He was adorable!

I haven’t been able to find out what species he is yet either – but I will have to find out. I would love to know what would attract these little guys to our yard!

Here’s a picture of him (or her!) from the front – if you click on the picture to see it bigger you can see a lot more detail:

Next is a picture my husband took of me taking a picture of it and then one I took of my husband taking a picture of the frog. They kind of help with understanding the size and scale of the frog:

Later on I saw another frog about the same size that was kind of brown or bronze in color, unfortunately it wouldn’t sit still for me to get a picture of it!

After that we walked through another prairie area on the way to the wetlands area.

Here are some of the flowers we saw along the way:

Here’s a picture of some butterfly weed (asclepias tuberosa). It seems I can never get a good picture of these blooms – its like they are so bright they overwhelm the camera or something:

Aside from the wooded area, before we went through more prairie we saw a really cool wall they have there. Yes, I know. Walls can only be so cool. And walls have nothing to do with wildlife or butterflies.

It was cool though. It was called a ‘serpentine’ wall. There was a sign saying something like Thomas Jefferson had designed one. I don’t know if this particular wall was based on his design or not. I should have taken a picture of the sign!

Anyway it is supposed to be sturdier. And as the name suggests, its curvy. Kind of like a zig-zag wall – only not pointy – just smooth curves instead. My husband took some pictures of it:

We next walked through a path in a somewhat wooded area. We saw little toads jumping all the around the edges of the woods!

I also saw a butterfly species I’ve never seen before! They may be common to some people, but I haven’t seen any in my garden. It is from the family Satyridae, but I’m not sure what species it is. I need to find out for certain. They are all brown with pretty eye spots on them. There were a bunch of them flying around. I was lucky to get a couple pictures that were in focus – none with their wings closed though. They were all either Little Wood Satyrs or Wood Nymphs:

Then I got really excited when I saw 2 Zebra Swallowtail caterpillars resting on Pawpaw trees growing along the path!

Both of them were getting ready to molt – I could tell by the sort of glassy eyed appearance of their head capsules when I looked at the close up.

It may seen silly to some people, but seeing those 2 species really made my day!

As we walked we passed through lots of prairie areas filled with native flowers and grasses. This part had lots of grey headed coneflowers in it:

Here were some black-eyed susans and some small white flowers:

Here’s a picture from some distance filled with black-eyed susans and many other flowers:

As I said earlier we went to Shaw Nature Reserve on the 4th – and I was so excited! We saw some pretty cool stuff – at least I really think it was cool!

I won’t post the pictures all in one day – there’s too many, so I’ll divide it up over as many days as it takes.

So, once we started walking out toward the prairie area we were walking on a gravel road:

And all up and down that road there were small butterflies puddling – dozens in little bunches! Now, for some people that may not seem like a big deal – but I’ve never seen it before, just heard of it. I’ve only seen one maybe two butterflies puddling anywhere at one time.

Quite a few of them were Pearl Crescents (at least I think they were, I sometimes can’t tell them apart from Checkerspots):

And then there were some type of Blues – I can never identify the species with these either. My guess is an Eastern Tailed Blue. These ones were really in larger number flying and resting all around each other. They flit around so fast and rarely have their wings open. However, one seemed to be injured and sat really still with its wings open – still I can’t identify it:

Anyone out there who can identify these species for certain?

It was certainly a great way to start out our walk!

And that gravelly stuff on the road – I want some like it to put somewhere in my garden – it must have just the right mix of minerals for them to be attracted to it for puddling!

Apparently its rare for a wasp sting to get infected but mine did. The swelling had gone down somewhat and then was worse yesterday. So my husband took me to the urgent care place – my finger was red, really swollen and a little warm so I was given some antibiotics. Its a type that will make my skin more sensitive to sunlight, so I will have to be more careful going outside the next few days. Makes me feel a little bit sick too.

Oh, and I was able to confirm that it was a paper wasp. I checked – very carefully – around the butterfly bush I had been trimming when I got stung and sure enough there was a paper wasp nest there. The wasp is now dead. The nest is gone. Yes, I like wildlife but not that much!

Every year we have lots of preying mantis’s around our garden. Usually in the spring I see a bunch of babies shortly after they hatch. A few times they’ve been right by our front door and we’ve actually had to be careful not to step on them or to let them walk into the house.

I was a little concerned this year because I hadn’t seen any yet. But today – I saw some!

Only three and they looked a little bigger than they usually are when I first see them. So I’m guessing that these are a few days old – and most of them has dispersed already – hence only seeing 3 of them or they could be a different species. Last year we saw at least one that was much larger that ones we usually see here.

I’m no expert on preying mantis species, but I was under the impression that the large ones where I live were all Chinese preying mantis (sorry don’t know scientific name). But clearly we’ve seen more than one type of large one.

At any rate, here are a couple picture of our new babies (you may need to click on the image for it to be big enough to see it clearly):

While I was away visiting my mom, the baby robins all flew away! I didn’t even get a last chance to get another picture of them! I was hoping to see them when they were first learning to fly too!

Earlier posts and pictures about the robins are here:

May 7 – The robins had their babies!
April 26 – Some baby Robins are on the way!

-updated: I forgot to add that we still have plenty of meal worms left over – anybody hungry?