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Butterflies

Category: Garden Wildlife | Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 1:38 am

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One good thing about living so close to Disney World is that we can visit more often. Right now EPCOT is having their Garden Festival. Yesterday we took the kids and got to enjoy the park's beautiful gardens. One of the family's favorite activities was the Ladybug release. They had a special garden full of interesting kid-friendly plants and they gave each person a matchbox sized box full of ladybugs. They sprayed our arms with water and had us open the boxes. The ladybugs quickly filed out and happily drank the water droplets. Very fun! My 2 year old was being kind of rough and killed one so I tried to take the box away so she promptly dumped the remainder down my shirt....NICE. At least they quickly marched out and flew away. My oldest son had a conga line of them go right up his arm, into his shirt sleeve and hide inside his armpit. POOR LADYBUGS!!!!

The Butterfly House was a BIG hit (with me at least), at the entrance they had this beautiful topiary:


It was kind of like a mini aviary...full of butterflies, caterpillars, and their favorite plants.


They had these wonderful boxes FULL of chrysalises:



I loved getting to see my favorite zebra longwing butterflies!

When I got home that evening I could see that my own fritillary caterpillar was getting ready to change:


Hanging upside down and slowly swaying.....

When I got up the next morning....look what I found:



So now we have about 2 weeks and then a new butterfly. I am not quite sure what's going on with the other caterpillar. I think caterpillar 1 did something (nibbled his antennae), or he's getting ready to shed again. He's kind of acting withdrawn.

I found a new butterfly plant the other day, well new to ME. It is called Porter Weed but it hardly looks like a weed. Anyhow it's planted next to my butterfly weed, which also doesn't look like a weed. I wish all my weeds looked so nice!

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Garden Critters

Category: Garden Wildlife | Posted: Thu May 24, 2007 1:50 pm

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My husband suggested using these old bird dishes as mini bird feeders. They seem pretty popular with the "locals". It is nice way to have little feeding stations hanging on the fence.




THIS is the larval host plant for my frittilary caterpillars. I planted this with high hopes of attracting my favorite zebra longwing butterflies, but have still been lucky enough to attract the pretty frittilaries.




My inside caterpillars appear to be getting ready to molt to the next instar. They are hanging out at the top of their cage--last time they did this they shed their skins.

~UPDATE~
One caterpiller DID shed it's skin. It looked like this one before:



And now looks like this:



If you notice the head is different. This is kind of funny, but I was horrified at the time. I moved him and his head FELL OFF! I felt terrible and then I noticed he was moving along just as usual, even eating, so I looked closer and saw he had a new larger ORANGE head...whew! So basically, the caterpillar in the first picture will lose his head soon, and right behind it, below the surface of the skin you can actually see where the new eyes are developing....it is so very alien!

My family got me this lovely faux bois bird bath for mothers day. It was kind of an ordeal to get it, he special ordered it from Home Depot and they kept selling it by mistake. Finally they called another store and luckily THEY had it so we could pick it up. Somehow I think the store needs to order MORE of this style because it is obviously very popular.



I was very pleased to see blue jays getting a drink from it the other day. I do hope the squirrels will use it because it really worries me to see them drinking out of the pool. I dread finding one that has drowned.

I feed a stray cat that I think belonged to the people who lived here before we bought the house. I am hoping that if I feed her enough she will leave the birds alone. She hasn't been hunting them, but she and the squirrels have some kind of crazy game....they chase eachother. I used to worry that she was terrorizing the squirrel, but now I can see that HE likes it too. The blue jays and woodpeckers LOVE it when I feed the cat, they impatiently wait for her to finish and then descend upon the bowl like a bunch of vultures. They are quite bold and I think it is a little unsettling for the cat.



When we moved we trapped her, got her spayed and vaccinated. She was totally wild, but now lets me pet her. Other cats come to visit, but she seems to be here 80% of the time.

Last edited: Thu May 24, 2007 6:44 pm

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