The Twelve Caterpillars of Christmas

Actually, it was sixteen or seventeen Monarch caterpillars, all chomping away at the lone Asclepia plant in the raised beds in the back yard.  Finding them was pretty funny, because I had just given Cindy a tee-shirt for Christmas that said, "Got Milkweed?" http://www.northernsun.com/Got-Milkweed-T-Shirt-%288467%29.html.

How Many Caterpillars????

The ravenous horde of caterpillars had pretty well stripped most of the leaves off that one plant, so we decided to move most of them to the Asclepia plants in the front yard.  Today I counted eight of them on those plants, but some of the caterpillars we moved yesterday looked about big enough to trundle off and find places to attach and form their chrysalises, so they may have done that.

Not Many Leaves Left

They aren't too choosy about where they attach; we initially thought they wanted a horizontal branch or something to attach their chrysalises to, but since then we've found them on vertical surfaces as well.  This summer we had one that attached to the driveway gate post and one that was unfortunately crushed because we didn't notice it had attached to the underside of the cover of the hot tub.

I hope they all survive; the world needs more butterflies.

A Little Off The Top

We had some trees trimmed recently; some had become problems, and Cindy wanted to take out one that was leaning over our property to increase the amount of light the garden could receive in that area.  Because some of the trees we were having trimmed belonged to the neighbors, who had given us permission to cut them, we hired a professional tree company with a master arborist to make sure the cutting was done properly and safely.  Since one of the major branches was above our power line, they had to have someone who was certified for that type of work.

Trees and Power Lines--Not Good Together

What we didn't count on was that it was very entertaining to watch the process from our upstairs windows.

We were amazed at how fast the work went, considering that they first had to climb the huge old Cedar tree and rig up the safety lines before they could even start work.

We also had the largest and probably oldest of our Lemonade Berry (Rhus integrifolia) shrubs taken out.  It was suffering from scorch, termites and Bark Beetles.

Lemonade Berry Shrubs

We like the Lemonade Berry shrubs because they're native, drought tolerant plants that grow slowly and their broad evergreen leaves are supposed to be "spark catchers", slowing down the progress of wildfires, but the big one was just too damaged to save, so we took it out to prevent the spread of some of these diseases to the other plants.  

Walking Sticks

We were talking to a gardening friend the other day about (surprise, surprise) gardening, and she asked Cindy what she should do to help the Walking Sticks she found in her garden.  She was carefully moving them onto her citrus trees in the hopes that they would be a beneficial insect that would control other, more harmful insects.

They are interesting looking insects that are hard to spot because they look just like the twigs and stems of the plants they inhabit.  They are so well camouflaged that I've never actually seen one and don't have any pictures of them.

So she was shocked when Cindy's response was, "kill them all immediately."

Turns out the Indian Walking Sticks that infest Southern California aren't native species and aren't beneficials at all, because they don't eat other bugs, but an infestation of them can devour quite a lot of foliage, stripping leaves down to the stems.

See National Geographic for a great photo of one and IPM Online for more information about them and how to control them.


So our gardener friend decided to feed them to her chickens instead.  Good call.

White Bird?

We've been noticing an interesting bird at our bird feeder in the last couple of months, but haven't been able to identify it.  The bird is about the same size and shape as the House Finches that flock around the feeder, but this bird has a lot of bright white feathers on its head, back and underside.  It's not entirely white; it has some black feathers on its wings, but the amount of white on this bird is noticeable enough to be startling.  Unfortunately, it doesn't appear very often and is so shy that I haven't been able to get a photo of it.

I've searched several bird books and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Bird Guide, but haven't found this bird.  The closest thing I've found is the Snow Bunting, but we are outside that bird's normal range, and the pictures of it seem to show more brown on it than our bird has.

An alternative suggestion from the Audubon Society is that it might be House Finch or sparrow that is a partial albino.  http://birds.audubon.org/faq/i-have-white-bird-my-feeder-it-albino.

Whatever it is, it's appearances have made watching the activity around our feeder even more interesting than usual.