Hummer Wars

Cindy really enjoys visiting other people's gardens because it means she can enjoy the garden without compiling a list of things she needs to do; weeds that need to be pulled, plants that need to be fertilized, bird feeders that need to be filled, and on and on and on in the gardener's endless list of chores.

So a couple of weeks ago we went to a party at a friend's house and were sitting out on her patio enjoying her garden and watching the hummingbirds at the feeder.  Lots of hummingbirds, all at the same feeder.  

We've never seen more than one hummingbird actually eating at our feeders at any one time.  Each feeder is usually claimed by a dominant male bird who sits up in the Lemonadeberry tree and guards the feeder from intruders.  If any other hummer dares to show up and try to eat there, the "owner" appears and chases him off in high-speed acrobatic moves the Navy's Blue Angels would envy.  

So we watched in astonishment as three, four, five, six and up to seven hummers congregated and sat down to eat at the feeder at the same time with only a few buzz-offs.  

We finally noticed that most of the birds did not have the colorful throat feathers of adult male hummers and decided that these birds must either be females or, more likely, juvenile birds that had just recently hatched out of a nest.  

I had seen that behavior before:  Daddy Bird lets the young ones feed at "his" feeder for a couple of weeks, then chases them off to go find their own sources of food.  No "boomerang" chicks for Hummingbirds, it's "go find your own feeder, kid".

I'm always amazed by these wonderful birds.  

By Popular Request

Glider

Cindy's dad had requested pictures of our new porch furniture, so here they are.

We've been looking at this furniture at an Amish store in Shipshewana, Indiana, for several years, and finally decided to order some.

We got a glider, a two person glider and an end table, and we liked them so much we ordered another table and a swivel rocker.

We had to put them together and learned in the process that if the Amish say, for example, "insert the 4 inch bolt, the 3 inch bolt and the 2 1/2 inch bolt", they mean insert them in that order or else it won't work.  But we finally got it together and we love it.

This furniture is made by LuxCraft, and the best thing about it is that it's made of polyethylene from recycled plastic bottles and milk jugs.  It won't warp, crack, splinter or rot and NEVER NEEDS TO BE PAINTED!   How cool is that?

Not Going Well

Monarch caterpillar Number One finally hatched today, but it did not go well.  The butterfly's wings never filled out and it was never able to fly.

Number One was the caterpillar that formed its chrysalis on the edge of the cage's zipper; the first time we opened the cage to add some Asclepia leaves for the other caterpillars to eat, the silk button began to unravel and the chrysalis was left hanging by a thread.

About a week ago the chrysalis fell off the cage when we were inserting more new Asclepia leaves, so I made an armature that we were able to tie the chrysalis to with cotton thread to keep it off the floor of the cage.

When the butterfly hatched today, it landed on its back on the floor of the cage and seemed to be struggling to grasp something with its feet, so I took the stick that I had used for the armature and let it grasp the stick while I moved it over to the leaves of the Jacaranda.  The butterfly kept trying to move its wings, but they remained crumpled and never filled out properly.

With other Monarch butterflies we've watched hatch, it usually only takes about an hour for the wings to fill out, so I knew this one was in trouble when that didn't happen.   Live Monarch.com indicates that crumpled wings can mean that we might have an outbreak of bacteria, or that the pupae was very stressed during the pupation process.  I'm hoping that it's the latter and that the other four chrysalises will be O.K.

As Cindy says, we're still learning about all this.  Meanwhile, I'm really bummed that it didn't work out for Number One.

Even More Caterpillars

As we were admiring the chrysalis Caterpillar Number Two had made Wednesday morning, and encouraging Number Three to get a move on and attach so we could finally clean the wilted vegetation and accumulated frass out of the cage, we noticed, oops, another little caterpillar.  And then another one.

The Monarchs currently frolicking in the butterfly garden in the front yard must have deposited some eggs on the new Asclepia leaves we had put into the cage on Monday.  And now they've hatched.

These two are only about an inch long, so they are probably in the fourth stage, or instar.  That means they've probably got at least another week to go before they will be ready to attach and form chrysalises, so we'll need to figure out how to get even more Asclepia leaves into the cage for them to eat.

With Numero Uno's chrysalis so close to the zippered door, that makes it a very delicate operation to open the door, take out the old plant leaves and put in new ones without dislodging the chrysalis.  Number Two attached close to the zipper but not on it, and now Number Three looks like he's going to attach a little further over from the zipper.

We may try to move the first chrysalis to a branch or something.  It's currently hanging from the zipper by some of the silk from the silk button the caterpillars form to keep them attached to whatever they've chosen, so we're thinking we might be able to wind some of the silk around a branch or something.  I have no idea whether this would work, but we're going to have to do something soon to get more Asclepia leaves into the cage for the new guys.

It's amazing how much these caterpillars can eat.

The Straight Poop

When we bought the Caterpillar Castle from www.livemonarch.com, they suggested that we should clean the cage with a 5% bleach solution after each group of butterflies had used it.

"Why would we need to do that?" we wondered.

Oh.

It's called "frass."

Turns out that caterpillars do nothing but eat and poop.  All day.  Every day.

The three of them have been in their castle for a week now and it's pretty clear that it will have to be thoroughly cleaned of the frass after they hatch.

It's a good thing they don't spend any time on the floor of their cage.  Yuk.

Of course, I couldn't resist pointing out to Cindy that that's NOTHING compared with what three chickens could put out.

Caterpillar Update

Looking For A Good Spot

Caterpillar Number Two, shown here industriously climbing the side of the mesh cage, finally stopped roaming and selected a site for his chrysalis close to, but fortunately not actually on, the cage's zippered door.

Number Two is now in the classic "J" shape and should form the chrysalis late today or sometime tomorrow.

When we were watching Mr. Upside Down last year, he took so long to form his chrysalis that we thought he was dead.  His antennae drooped and hung limp, his skin shriveled up and we thought he was a goner for sure.

However, what we didn't know then was that this is a normal part of the process of metamorphosis; the caterpillar is actually forming the chrysalis underneath the outer skin, which it sheds when the chrysalis has formed.  The skin splits and drops away to reveal the chrysalis.

The Monarch chrysalis is a very beautiful thing; it looks like a small green jewel with a rim of golden dots around the top and other gold dots on the body of the chrysalis.

As the butterfly inside the chrysalis matures, the chrysalis grows darker and you can see the orange and black of the Monarch wings forming inside.

It's an amazing process and we love watching it happen.

Codependent to Caterpillars, Part II

Butterfly Garden

We love our front-yard butterfly garden, especially when we see several Monarch butterflies at once enjoying the flowers and bushes we've put there to attract them.

In fact, we've had lots of Monarchs this summer flying around and landing on the Asclepia, the lavenders and the Buddleia.

What we haven't had is what makes butterflies:  namely, caterpillars.  The Asclepia plants were flourishing, but with all those Monarchs fluttering around, they should have been all but stripped of leaves.  But they weren't.

After the disaster of the Anise Swallowtail caterpillars we found on the parsley in the back yard, probably gobbled up by the Scrub Jays that hang around our bird feeder, we relocated some several Monarch caterpillars from an Asclepia plant in the back yard.  When they, too, disappeared, we began to think that maybe it wasn't just the Scrub Jays eating our caterpillars.

Wasps, lizards, ants and other predators eat caterpillars and we now suspect that the Mud Dauber Wasps that have built nests all over the eaves of our house may be responsible for the disappearance of the Monarch caterpillars.  (Caution:  that article is fairly graphic--don't read it if you're squeamish--it's like something out of "Alien").

The good news about these wasps is that they prefer to use spiders, especially Black Widows, to feed their larvae; the bad news is that they will also use butterfly caterpillars.  That's O.K. with us if the caterpillars are the larvae of the Tomato Hornworm, laid by the Sphinx Moth, but not O.K. if it's our Monarch caterpillars.

So, to protect at least some of the Monarch caterpillars, we finally bought a butterfly cage, a soft-sided mesh cage to protect them.  The cage has a clear plastic side and three mesh sides, one of which has a zipper to form a door on that side so you can open the cage.

Last Tuesday we put two fairly large Monarch caterpillars into it with some of the Asclepia in a bud vase with water.  Cindy wound plastic wrap around the stems of the plants so the caterpillars wouldn't crawl in and drown, which was probably a good precaution:  I don't think they can swim.  Then the next day we found two more caterpillars and moved them in, using a rose bud vial with a rubber lid.  We put stones in the bottom to keep the whole thing from blowing over in the wind.

By Friday the first caterpillar had crawled off the plants and attached to the cage to form a chrysalis.  Naturally, since nothing is ever easy, Numero Uno decided to attach and form his chrysalis very close to the zipper, which made it very difficult to open the cage to put fresh plants for caterpillars Two and Three.  Number four was very small and we never found out what happened to him, but Two and Three were eating everything in sight, so we had to slide the fresh plants in very carefully.

So that's the story so far.  Today Number Two is crawling all over the cage, looking for a suitable place to attach (NOT near the zipper, PLEASE!), and Number Three is still eating everything is sight and will probably attach soon, too.