Speaking of butterflies

A neighbor stopped by Sunday evening to ask my husband about all the butterflies in our yard. I called the next day to see if she would like talk about gardening for butterflies. She came by yesterday, we got rained out, and we tried again this morning. Turns out she is also a bird lover and cat lover and is just beginning to think about planting for wildlife. I thought it might be helpful to see how big a footprint the plants will eventually need, which ones spread and take over, and which ones are favorites among butterflies, bees, wasps, hummingbirds, and songbirds. (As long as the wasps leave us alone, I don't mind them. Some of my favorite birds eat wasps.)

Every winter I try to dig out some of the passion vine that is growing too vigorously among my camellias and citrus. When the weather gets really cold and there are no caterpillars, I try to thin out the roots. Every summer I enjoy the swarms of fritillaries and zebra long wings that spring up from its leaves, but it's overwhelming how the vines cover up the bushes.

We also talked about larval food for specific butterflies. It's rewarding to see the caterpillars grow. A gardener has to understand that among the flowers, there will be some plants that are eaten all the way back to the stalks. The more you plant, the more they eat. That's the trade off.

Brand new

Tomorrow is trash day. I was taking the can down to the street when something in the driveway caught my eye. A monarch butterfly. It looked odd. Gradually I realized its wings were still filling out. It must have just hatched out of its chrysalis. So glad not to have stepped on it, or rolled the can over it, I continued down to the street. As I came back up the driveway, trying to remember exactly where it was, in relation to the live oak tree, I saw the monarch fluttering over to a camellia bush, its wings now ready for flight. It was flying confidently, to flowers, over bushes, then back to the cut leaf coneflowers that are now in full bloom. This weekend is an international monarch counting day, so I will see if I can figure out how to post the number I have seen in my yard this weekend. I felt privileged to have them in my yard, whether I see them or not. It is pretty great to see them, though.

Cat, bird, and snake

I was reading the paper while the cats had their morning time outside. Suddenly Daisy leaped into the air at something. She was under the abelia bush, right by the cat door. I thought she was after a butterfly. Then a hummingbird came by and took a long hard look at the abelia bush before deciding against it. That's when I saw the snake. It was another yellow and brown striped rat snake, but smaller this time. It was coiled around a branch and bunched up in distress.

Bob went around and got the snake out of the bush. It gave him a little bite. Mack came to watch. Then Bob succeeded in catching the snake, which was watching both him and the cat. He put it up into a tree where it could easily get away from the cats. Naturally, all three of the cats sniffed the area on the grass where the snake had been. 

We know many creatures travel through our yard and the woods behind the house. A week ago, I heard a fox calling to her kits for almost half an hour before the yard crew arrived next door. I was doubly glad I had kept the cats in. The foxes stayed in the woods that morning, but sometimes Mack goes into the woods. He seems to do it less than he did before his misadventures in March. Of that I am very glad.

Look up!

If I hadn't procrastinated and gone for a walk around the block at high noon today, I would have missed a wonderful sight. I heard them before I saw them-- a high-pitched chittering that seemed to come from the tops of the trees on all sides. Then they flew over me about twenty feet off the ground, over a house near me. Swallow-tailed kites, three of them. They circled back and began to climb higher and higher, still calling for a while. I stopped to watch. Then I looked down for a moment and they were gone.

Look down!

Birders say, "Look up!" It's true we spend most of our time looking down to where our feet are about to go. When I'm mowing the lawn, it's best to look down. A week ago I had just mowed about ten yards when I saw a sudden movement to the right of the mower. It was a brown and yellow striped rat snake, a pretty good-sized one, bunched up in self-defense. I stopped moving and she/he went off to the nearest flower bed. Yesterday, I saw a sudden movement in the grass and it was a large, very fluffy white caterpillar scrambling to climb a blade of grass to safety. I mowed around it and went back later to notice field marks. A Virginia tiger moth caterpillar.

In the looking up department, two days ago I let the cats out around 7am and walked out to enjoy the morning with them on the front walkway. Four pileated woodpeckers were in two pine trees right there by the driveway, clacking and climbing, looking for something to eat. The cats were a little startled, and so were the woodpeckers, and the birds moved on to farther trees.

The juvenile red-shouldered hawk that fledged into our oak tree has become more confident with her flying. For about a week she was mostly laddering in the oak tree next to the garage, trying to figure out how to navigate through the trees. Her parent brought her prey drops. I could tell when those happened because she would stop calling and grow quiet. She stays mainly in the pine trees now, which is where her parents would rather have her. She started working on her hunting skills about three weeks ago, trying to catch doves from the bird feeder. Then she moved on to squirrels, which seem to be easier. She comes into the yard every day, with her parent nearby keeping an eye on her progress.