CassieBash's Critters Summer 2018 Edition

Here's the link to the spring 2018 edition.

For the first day of summer, here's a picture of my first ever bloom from a lily I've had for years. The moles kept undermining them, stunting their growth, until this year. I've finally convinced the moles, somehow, to leave my garden alone.

Over the weekend, a bunch of monarchs emerged, with only one that emerged with crumpled wings: 5 on Friday, 2 Saturday and 4 Sunday, plus one black swallowtail. I did find 4 monarch eggs last night while gathering sassafras for the spicebush swallowtails.

This week's Critter is probably an obscure one as far as most Americans are concerned, but anyone living in the approximate eastern 2/3rds of the U.S. should learn to recognize it and handle it with extreme caution. The American oil beetle, or Meloe americanus, has a very effective and potent defense. They also target certain pollinators as food and are like the beetle versions of cuckoos--more on that later. But though they sound thoroughly unredeeming--few things prey on them. But there is one potential benefit to mankind that may come of this creature--so read on!



You see, the Meloe family of beetles are known either as oil beetles or as blister beetles, and for a very good reason. These guys, when disturbed, will ooze out cantharidin, a chemical that causes burns and, of course, blisters--it probably goes without saying, considering the family's common name. While not fatal (provided you don't ingest any) and the burns will heal eventually, they are extremely painful. This stuff comes out of their joints, and from my observations, is usually a clear but oily-looking yellow or green color. In addition to the cantharidin looking rather oily, the beetles also look oily, usually black with blue, violet, and other colors associated with oil slicked puddles in parking lots. So the name, at least, is fitting.

Their life cycles are as strange as their chemical defense; they lay thousands of eggs, and they do so in clutches, so that the young will all hatch out together in a large group. This is because the young will start their lives together to try to guarantee that perhaps a few survive--a sort of sibling sacrifice. After hatching from their eggs, the young--known as triungulins--will seek out plants and all start up the stems, where they gather in a cluster and release pheromones--not for other beetles, but for the males of solitary-species bees (as opposed to social bees), who of course is so besotted with pheromones that he thinks the cluster of baby beetles is a female bee. When he makes contact, he's swarmed with as many as can climb on, and when he happens upon a real female, he passes the larvae on to her body, which she then takes back to her nest to lay her eggs. The triungulins will feed on the stock-piled pollen and other food for as long as it lasts, and then will often make a meal of the poor bee's offspring. From there, they become pupae and then adults.

Interestingly, the ladies can't produce this chemical and must rely on the stockpiles they're given from birth; females will choose male beetles for mating purposes based on the amount of cantharidin he gives his intended, so that she can lace her offspring with as much as possible.

So they sound like the bad guys, right? (Well, technically, there is no "bad guy" in nature, really--animals just do what they do to survive. We're probably the closest thing nature has to a bad guy, with the polluting and over-hunting and -fishing, etc., etc., but anyway....) Well, that stuff they ooze out, the cantharidin, is being studied right now due to its major anticancer properties. So who knows? Maybe these seemingly nasty beetles may turn out to be our saviors.

1 monarch released, but now I'm a "grandmother", as those I released earlier are laying eggs all over the place. I have several; today will probably be the last day I go actively looking for eggs and caterpillars until after the heat wave. They're calling for triple-digit heat indices tomorrow and Saturday, with a very slight cool-down on Sunday--but still probably hot enough that I won't want to spend any more time outside than I have to.

A perfect weekend for reading!

Just some garden and pond pics to post, because I don't have anything else to post and because I can:

















Enjoy, everyone, and try to stay cool if you're in the hot zones this weekend.

Yesterday, one male monarch and today one of each gender emerged. Also yesterday two gray moths also emerged--have yet to ID them.

This week's Critter is another insect, the mayfly:



Like the June bug, a brilliantly-colored beetle that, at least in our area, shows up in July, the mayfly is similar in its misnomer, showing up not just in May but throughout the spring and summer months to live their short lives. Sort of. Mayflies are in a family (or rather, families--there are 42 which are in turn part of several superfamilies) of insects that undergo incomplete metamorphosis; they have no pupal state but rather continue to molt and slowly gain their adult body shapes and wings as they do so. The adult stage is where life is short; what would be the "larval" stage in those insects with complete metamorphosis is termed a nymph or, in the case of aquatic young such as these, a naiad (referencing the name for Greek water nymphs). These nymphs can live for years in the water, most species eating algae and other plant matter, though a few species are carnivorous, eating smaller insects than themselves--and a few can change their diet as they grow, allowing for flexibility in their food sources. As if that's not unusual enough, mayflies are the only insects that undergo a second molt after the final nymph stage, known as a subimago (or apparently a dun, if you're a fly fisherman). This stage is generally characterized by the physical appearance of an adult mayfly with one notable exception--it usually lacks wings. Fish love this stage of the mayfly development and this stage is often recreated in artificial lures. This period in the insect's life is incredibly short, lasting as long as up to 2 days but in some species only lasting a few minutes. After the subimago stage is finished, the final molt is the imago, or adult, stage, shown above.

The adult stage is the one most of us are used to seeing, and usually where you see one, you see a whole lot. This is because the mayflies all tend to develop together and emerge, or hatch, from their nymph stages in one large group over a short period of time. It's very common to see the pale, whitish, freshly-molted adults drying on the surfaces of sidewalks, trees, buildings, even gas station pumps if you're in the right area. Some hatchings have been so big that they have been spotted on Doppler radar. Important to aquatic ecology when young as a main food source for many fish, several species are susceptible to the effects of various types of pollution, and those that are more tolerant of polluted water tend to be consumed in such large quantities that concern over toxin build-up in fish is a distinct possibility in areas where water pollution is common. Additionally, if there is a lack of mayfly nymphs in the environment, algae blooms can happen, as these creatures should be found in sufficient numbers to help keep the algae under control.

Had the second black swallowtail and one more of those mystery moths emerge. Unlike the 2 previous moths, I managed to get photos of this one, which should help me when I finally get around to trying to ID it.





I think there's a whole family of these moths with the fuzzy crests on their backs; this should give me something to do over the holiday, when the heat index is going to be only slightly better than this past weekend while we're back under a heat advisory.

Since most of my thread readers seem to love frogs, and since it seems to me like it's been awhile since I've done an amphibian Critter, let's say that this week's honored creature is the wood frog, Rana sylvatica.



Wood frogs are found in Canada and the U.S. While most frogs we have in Indiana are tied very much to bodies of water--green frogs, bullfrogs, leopard frogs, etc.--wood frogs are a rather terrestrial breed. I've found ours in shady areas that may be near water, but they aren't right there in it or at the shoreline like most others. But what can you expect from a frog that's considered unusual in many ways, from its wide color variations to its ability to its preference of laying its eggs in temporary bodies of water, rather than more stable, permanent ones. This last part is thought by many scientists to be a way to limit predation, since fish and other marine creatures won't be found in large puddles as a general rule. And they'll go the distance to find a suitable body of water to their liking; wood frogs are extremely mobile and will move easily between one type of habitat, such as a peat bog, to another, like a forest. Being extremely cold tolerant like other northern species of frogs (they're the only species of frog found north of the Arctic Circle), the wood frogs hibernate just under the soil in the leaf litter, rather than in water or deep underground, and like spring peepers, they are one of the first to come out to breed in the spring.

Like other Rana frogs, the tadpoles are omnivorous, eating algae but also insect eggs and larvae, and even other wood frog eggs. Adults eat any small invertebrates they find on their terrestrial terrain. Because it can vary so widely in color, the easiest way to identify a wood frog is by the mask around its eyes. While our population tends towards a pinkish color, other populations may be brown and some are even paler than ours. I've seen a picture where the frog is so brown it could be mistaken easily for a green frog, if not for the mask.

I've had a couple of monarchs and 3 spicebush swallowtails emerge over the past few days. Sunday I took a walk down the gravel road, where the dust (thanks to our little mini-drought) lies thick on the leaves. Still, I found several monarch caterpillars and eggs, and a few black swallowtail eggs on the Queen Anne's lace, one of which has hatched. I removed all the larger caterpillars from the dust-coated leaves in order to put them on the clean leaves pulled from our pesticide-free gardens and horse pasture. Aside from a couple of losses--it's typical to lose a few here and there from internal parasites and/or disease--the monarchs are thriving. I also have three tobacco hornworms (Carolina Sphinx moth larvae) eating Jimsonweed, along with several eggs obtained from the tomatoes and weeds. I'm down to three spicebush swallowtail caterpillars; the rest are in their chrysalis form. The monarchs take up two tanks, including one of the larger ones, plus a nursery for the first instars and an incubator for the eggs. Unless I find some tiger swallowtails or silkworms, this is it, species-wise, for me. Later I might collect some of the milkweed tussock moth caterpillars, since I'll already be feeding milkweed, but I'm not going out of my way for any more species. NOAA and the local weathermen had predicted a cooler and wetter summer for us than average, but I'm not buying it! We haven't had rain for two weeks or more and we've had heat advisories and warnings almost every week for at least a day--two weeks ago the entire weekend, from Friday until Monday morning, we were in an excessive heat warning for heat indices that topped 100, with Saturday's 110 being the worst day. Looking forward to the cold front that's moving in soon and hoping it brings some rain--though the weatherman said it would be scattered and short-lived.

But while walking to the gravel road, I heard a rustling in the tall grass by the road, and I expected a squirrel or rabbit. Turns out it was a turkey, who was wary but not panicked, so I was able to get quite close and take some good pictures to share.

Yikes! This is NOT typical Indiana wildlife. Please, people, for the love of God, sanity, and Pete (whoever he is and whyever he'd care), DON'T release non-natives into the wild where they don't belong! It's not good for anyone, including (and especially) the animal you released. This fellow would have needlessly died if the Indiana Department of Natural Resources had come out to get it instead of individuals willing to try to give it a good home. If you truly love these animals, do your research, find out if it's the pet for you, and don't buy it if you can't take care of it through its natural life span.

This week's Critter is a return to the class of animals known as insects, order Hemiptera, family Gerridae. Sounds impressive and perhaps a little exotic? Not a bit! This week we honor the little, charming creature known by lots of names, but mostly by water strider.


Water strider G remigis
By Bruce J. Marlin CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5), via Wikimedia Commons

Normally, I'd try to get pictures of one of these guys; we have them skating across the surface of our pond right now, so theoretically it shouldn't be too difficult, right? They're not particularly shy around people and, unlike basilisk lizards, they can sit, their long legs splayed, on the surface of the water for a long time. Problem is, the fish tend to think I'm going to feed them and all congregate in front of me, and the water striders take off--fast--when they see all those fish coming over. And who can blame them? Being a small aquatic insect low on the food chain makes one jumpy, I suppose.

This family of over 1,700 species is mostly freshwater but about 10% of them have saltwater habitats. Most are small and have a body length (not including leg span) of around or less than an inch, with the ladies being bigger than the gents--but one species in northern Vietnam and the adjacent areas of China reaches a body length of close to 1 1/2 inches, which is a big bug to be skating around on the water's surface. Obviously, smaller insects can be held up easier with surface tension than larger ones. Of course, having your legs splayed across the surface of the water also helps distribute their weight evenly across more surface area, and little hairs on the legs keep water from sticking to them and weighing them down. Still other hairs on the strider's body prevents the insect from moisture collecting on it from rain, spray, or waves, which prevents it from being weighed down by water on its body. If it should happen to be swamped, those same hairs trap air bubbles that act like a life jacket and would help it bob to the surface, as well as providing air to allow it to breathe underwater. When it comes to propelling itself across the water, the middle set of legs are the oars, used for rowing, while the back pair are the rudders, used for steering. The small front pair aren't used for locomotion or for support on the water but for detecting and holding onto prey; these guys are predators that feed on spiders and insects that end up on the surface of the water, found when the sensitive front feet pick up the vibrations on the water's surface. While we tend to think of these little creatures as looking so peaceful and happy, skating around on the water, it's hard to think about them having a dark side, but these insects are like a pack of aquatic vampires; if the prey is big enough, you can have multiple striders feasting on the unfortunate creature at the same time. Take a look at the example below:


A group of water striders devouring a honey bee
By Fritz Geller-Grimm CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5) or CC BY 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5), from Wikimedia Commons

Water striders are true bugs in that they suck juices from another organism, be it plant or, in this case, animal. They have enzymes that they inject that break down the insides of their prey and they suck out the resulting liquids, just like spiders. And like spiders, they prefer their victims to be alive. But they, in turn, are food for fish, birds, frogs, and other insects--not to mention larger species of water spiders, ironically. They even hunt each other, with predation mainly focusing on hunting the nymphs.

While territorial, when it isn't mating season, they will form groups as adults; scientists think this may be to make it easier to hunt and find shelter when they aren't competing for mates. When they are being territorial, water striders will use their legs to create vibrations that repel other potential striders.

One last interesting fact about water striders is that they have what's known as wing polymorphism. When you're an aquatic animal, wings may get in the way, getting wet and weighing you down. But wings also allow for striders to find new territory when a pond or lake has too many already, or if the body of water is small and likely to dry up during droughts. So even within certain species, different generations of striders will have wings, or not, as their environment demands. Those born in our pond, for instance, may develop wings as needed, because our pond, while not in danger of drying out, is relatively small and can only support so many striders. Lake Maxinkuckee, the second largest natural lake in our state, can support huge numbers of striders and therefore most if not all of those offspring may never develop wings at all. Weird and cool, huh?

Been having spicebush swallowtaills emerging left and right; 3 last night and 4 the previous day, plus a stray monarch or two here and there. No spicebush swallowtail caterpillars now--I'm thinking we're between generations--but I do have 12 black swallowtail caterpillars, along with a so-far unidentified looper that I collected last night that was eating the Queen Anne's lace, so I just popped him in the with swallowtails. Monarchs also seem to be mostly caterpillars right now, with the few adults I've seen flying around interested in milkweed. This is generation 2, by my count, so I'm curious about whether they will squeeze in a third one before migration time--if we ever get rain to keep the milkweed going, they could probably squeeze in another before the end of September if they're quick about it. The multitude of hornworms are doing well, as the largest have gone "underground"--they have special tanks with sand in the bottom to allow for their natural instinct to burrow when pupating--and the small ones are eating Jimsonweed like crazy. If I run out of Jimsonweed, which doesn't quite yet look likely, I have plenty of horse nettle in the pasture.

Another two adult monarchs released into the world yesterday evening--a male and a female. Also, I think the looper is a common looper moth.

A resident here at the Maria Center, part of The Center at Donaldson, (of which Ancilla College, where I work, is also a part of, raises monarch butterflies. She's new to the Center and I'm hoping to run into her (or she could come down to the College and visit me) so we can talk butterflies. Apparently, she's loaned about 8 or so to reside at the Motherhouse reception desk, while she has lots more upstairs in her room. I'm curious if she's raised any other species; perhaps I'll bring in one of my small tanks next week--maybe the black swallowtails--to the College for a visit, invite everyone to come see them, and entice her down my way.

Two more gentlemen monarchs are out and about, and also another spicebush swallowtail--though of course gender is a lot harder to determine with them. And to give you an idea of the hornworm population here:





These pictures are a little outdated; the largest four in the first photo have already gone to ground to pupate, the smaller two are now getting close to the same size as the other four, and the dozen or so of the tiniest ones (like the one in the second picture) are now about as thick as a pencil and are growing at a fast pace. With the rain that's expected this weekend, our milkweed should recover, and the horse nettle, on standby in case we run out of Jimsonweed, will perk up. After over 2 weeks without any rain and temperatures in the mid 80s-low 90s, even the weeds are looking pretty sad. Probably the only thing keeping it from being worse is the high humidity Indiana tends to get in the summertime. Unpleasant for people and animals having to deal with the heat index, but in times of drought up here, there's at least some moisture--even if it is only in the air.

Catching up on threads, and thoroughly enjoyed this one. On our trip I saw several new-to-me species of butterfly, dragonfly, mammal, and bird, and managed photos of all but one: Sandhill crane!

I was talking to a friend in Canada yesterday. Her garden is in horrible shape because of the lack of rain. The only positive sign is that her milkweed is disappearing fast as it is covered with Monarch caterpillars.

>16 fuzzi: I'm glad that you had such a great time; I missed you on my threads! And I could have had a great shot of three sandhill cranes in a horse pasture by the side of the road one day on my morning commute, except I passed them before my brain registered what I was seeing. They were close to the road, too! Feel free to share some wildlife pictures here; any that would make a good Critter of the Week? (As if any critter wouldn't make a good one!)

>17 MarthaJeanne: We had been so dry that even the smaller milkweed plants in our horse pasture were drying up and dying. I think it has hurt the egg-laying. I have been releasing several; I had 9 emerge on Saturday and four yesterday, and a couple on Friday. I've been seeing them flitting around the milkweed in the pasture, and hopefully the 3+ inches of rain that fell this weekend (plus the light rain we just had this morning and perhaps, as dark as it looks outside, maybe a second round of it) will mean a milkweed recovery. I think that if the weather holds, the monarchs could squeeze in one more generation here if the milkweed can remain viable. If I have to, late this season, I'll feed my 5th instar caterpillars with cucumber.

The black swallowtails, now numbering 13, are doing well as of Saturday night. I had a Muncie trip on Sunday and simply checked for releases and to verify that everyone still had fresh food (the cooler temps and rain have helped keep things fresher longer) so I didn't do a head count, but I have no reason to think things have changed. I did see the largest three or four of the group eating away. Hornworms, too, seem to be doing well, with the small ones having really grown suddenly over the weekend, becoming noticeably larger--and of course with larger appetites!

Another 10 monarchs have emerged, and I actually found 3 (!) monarch caterpillars on the single stalk of a swamp milkweed in my garden. I'm glad I caught them while they were small or they would have stripped the plant bare--and I don't have too many swamp milkweeds yet. Also found 2 eggs and a tiny, newly-hatched monarch cat.

Critter of the Week:

This guy was outside the College doors this morning, begging to be noticed, so we'll just say that the katydid is our Critter.





All katydids belong to the same order of insects as grasshoppers and crickets. There are two suborders, one of which is for grasshoppers, locusts, and their closest kin, and the other is for crickets and their closest kin. And believe it or not, the katydid is more closely related to crickets and is in their suborder. I found this somewhat strange; I've held many a cricket (mostly ushering them out of the house and away from cats and dogs who would worry them to death) and have never been bitten by one. Their mouth parts don't seem able to work that way. Grasshoppers, however, do bite, and anyone who has been bitten by both a grasshopper and a katydid will tell you that while a grasshopper's bite hurts, a katydid's bite hurts waaaayyy more. But hey, if scientists say they're more closely related to crickets--some even call them bush crickets--then who am I to argue? Another name for them is long-horned grasshoppers, and if you look at the antennae (the "horns") on a katydid, you'll see why. There are 255 species in North America alone, and over 2,000 in the Amazon River Basin--and that's just a small fraction of them, since they're found on every continent but (no big surprise) Antarctica.

In many places, katydids are considered plant-eating pests (as is the case in Indiana), but some are actually predatory, feeding on other insects or even small snakes and lizards. Even though they eat plants and are frequently considered pests, populations often don't get out-of-control, as will happen sometimes with true locusts. They communicate using special sound-producing organs located on the back edge of the front set of wings. Each species has its different call based on its size, the spacing of the sound organs, and what they use to scrape across the sound organs. Like cicadas (called "locusts" by many though this is technically a misnomer), you can actually tell the approximate temperature by the number of chirps; here in America take the number of chirps in 15 seconds and add 37 to it to figure the temperature in Fahrenheit.

Different katydids have different body shapes (the one above, which I believe to be a fork-tailed bush katydid, is slender compared to the species known as the true katydid, which has a compact, stout body), but they all seem to have some leaf-like qualities to blend in with the foliage where they eat and, if predatory, hunt. Katydids have a relatively long lifespan for an insect, some living up to around a year. They lay their eggs either in the soil like the grasshoppers do, or in host plant stems, and while the nymphs--the young katydids--look very much like the adults without wings, they will slowly go through their incomplete metamorphosis, growing wings that will get bigger with each molt, until reaching adulthood in the late summer/early fall in most places.

FYI--If you live anywhere in the United States, including Hawaii and Alaska, you may very well see the fork-tailed bush katydid. They're common as dirt across all 50 states. They specialize in eating trees and apparently may have a fondness for orange trees in particular. Not really a concern here in Indiana....

For anyone who's wondering why my Critter posts are a bit insect-heavy, I'm going on the record here saying that insects, as one of the largest classes of animals, will be bound to have more Critter postings than any other species. That's the way it is, especially since they can claim the beetles, which may very well be the largest family of animals on Earth; I read somewhere that one in every three living species is a beetle. (Wow--that's a lot of beetles.)

Another 8 monarchs emerged!

11 monarchs emerged this time, and generation 3 of monarchs is well underway, with many eggs and even a few first instar caterpillars collected. The last of generation 2 are just now prepping for chrysalis state, so whether they will reproduce before heading down to Mexico is anyone's guess. I'd love to think we could squeeze in a 4th generation but I think that would be pushing it.

>19 CassieBash: I didn't know that katydids bite!

Here are photos of the three "new-to-me" butterflies:


7/11/18 - Wood nymph


7/12/18 - Great Spangled Fritillary


7/12/18 - White Admiral

I also have photos of a Franklin's ground squirrel, a chipmunk, and a red squirrel. The Franklin's was also a first view for me.

Video of the Franklin's ground squirrel:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W1tNy1ujKi4

>22 fuzzi: Yes, very much so. They don't like being picked up and held, and unlike grasshoppers, who don't have a lot of head mobility, they can tuck their heads quite far down to get you. Thus, holding a grasshopper between thumb and forefinger on the thorax (which is conveniently flat and hard) works well but with a katydid, whose body is a lot less hard and bends easier, they can get you good. If I have to move a katydid by hand, I try to grab the wings from the top, pinching them shut, and then quickly give the insect a toss. Usually they will open their wings mid-air and fly (grasshoppers often do the same). More often, I try to use the capture in a container method.

Please share your Franklin's ground squirrel picture when you have the time; that one would also be a first for me. White admirals and wood nymphs aren't common in my neck of the woods; thanks for sharing. Usually, we have a bunch of great spangled fritillaries around, especially as our yard is full of their larval host plant, violets, but I haven't seen any this year and fear that our little yard isn't enough to support a sustainable population on its own, and that habitat loss and well-manicured lawns have diminished the species. And since we're talking about the lovely fellow and you provided such a nice picture of one, let's just say that this, the most common fritillary species in the eastern part of the U.S., is this week's Critter!

While common in the east, especially in the northern 2/3rds of the east, it does go as far west as the coast, with Washington, Oregon, and the northern part of California all able to claim it, as well as the lower parts of Canada--though it may be rare on the edges of its boundaries. This butterfly's young feed exclusively on violets (of any kind), which isn't of itself all that amazing, but these little caterpillars can do something that few caterpillars, outside of the banded woolly bear and the giant leopard moth, can do--they winter over as caterpillars. Now to me, it's amazing enough that the woolly and leopard larvae can do it, at least here in northwest Indiana, where actual temperatures (let alone wind chills) can reach to -20 or lower, for several days at a time. These critters don't even burrow; they simply find some leaf litter and wait it out. Not only do they do this, but unlike woolly and leopard caterpillars, they do it as first instars--tiny threads that go dormant for long periods of time. Then in May and June, the caterpillars emerge to feed, but they do so only at night--another caterpillar oddity--hiding in leaf litter away from its host plant. It makes a chrysalis in June, emerges in July, and then lays eggs from late August into September. Adults love wildflowers; aside from the thistle that fuzzi's is on, it also likes milkweed, composites like Joe-Pye weed, legumes like clover, alfalfa, and vetch, dogbane, and coneflower. They like moist areas, which may be why I'm not seeing many right now, as we once more face a week without rain (that hopefully will come to an end tomorrow).

But having violets growing in your yard may not be enough on it's own, either. Because they like to use leaf litter for winter hiding and refuge during the day, butterfly experts suggest leaving patches of it around areas that might be attractive to fritillaries. So if you have a large patch of violets underneath a big tree or two, maybe leave those leaves in the violets to naturally decompose.

It has rained! Which made for a wet release yesterday afternoon for the half-dozen monarchs. Fortunately, the rain was not driving nor stormy, so the faithful hackberry tree trunk, with its many sheltering branches, provided a drier place for them to hang out until they were ready to face the rain. A few brave monarchs did fly out into the rain, but the majority decided that clinging to the tree was a smart move.

Many of my monarch eggs have hatched; I'm down to 2 full incubators now. This Saturday, I plan on washing the sides and bottoms of two of the tanks used for the previous monarch generations, disinfecting them with vinegar and letting them sit in the sun (if there is any) to dry. UV can be hard on some viruses so I like to let my disinfected tanks sit in bright sunlight whenever possible. I also need to open up and prep a final reserve tank, because if generation 3 is as successful as gen 2 was, I'll be needing at least 4 tanks for the monarchs alone. As more of my black swallowtail caterpillars reach the 5th instar stage and make their chrysalises, I'll be able to move in the next generation of spicebush swallowtails, which are tiny at this point in time and so are in a nursery container. The hornworms--the one white-lined sphinx has his own--should all soon be going to ground and several already have, so I need to prep a winter tank for their cocoons. Lots of stuff to do for the final generations and for fall/winter storage!

Yippee for rain! We've had a week's worth, plus, and I'm thoroughly sick of it.

>25 fuzzi: See if you can convince a couple of inches' worth to come up here. We're still considered abnormally dry in our part of Indiana, according to NOAA. (If you look at the linked map, we're in the yellow square to the right of the county that looks vaguely like Idaho tipped on its side.)

Ouch. We had over 15" of rain last week, would love to share.

>27 fuzzi: We need the weather to sort itself out a little more fairly across the U.S.... We've been dry for a few days now--but there's literally a chance of rain starting Monday every day for a week. And poor California could use some heavy rain to help contain those fires.

Austria is a lot smaller than the US, but here also, farmers in the Northern areas are losing large amounts of their crops to drought, while towns in the South are dealing with repeated flooding, mud slides ... Some of the rain amounts have been amazing. One storm recently was 60 l/m2 in half an hour! We have another week of weather in the 30s - up to 38 later this week, over body temperature, so I guess I'm not going downtown this week. Still, better than Spain and Portugal where they are in the 40s.

We've had bits and pieces of rain, and some fairly heavy dew, so with watering my garden is holding out well. But the weeds are getting out of hand, as I'm just not up to working outside in this. The vintners are happy, though. Quantities will be down a bit, but they expect very good quality, and harvesting starting about two weeks earlier than usual.

>29 MarthaJeanne: I saw today on the news that it's, on general and on average, been hotter just about everywhere recently. I don't know how your 60 l/m2 equates in our unit of measures but 60 units of anything sounds like a lot, especially in half an hour. Normally, Indiana doesn't get catastrophic floods like those seen after hurricanes, but this year was an exception. Northwest Indiana has quite a few lakes and rivers, and the rivers in particular were hard on roads and bridges. I know of one or two bridges in our area that had to be shut down for repairs, and numerous roads that had washed out--though no mud slides that I can recall. At least your weather there has brought smiles to your vintners' faces.

Last week, Goshen's Kroger announced that it would be reopening for the first time since the flooding back in February. This drone footage shows the Kroger (on the left side at the start of the video) and the surrounding area. The Elkhart River flows through it; there's a dam that makes a pond, and to top it off, a rather largish creek also runs through it, and we'd had very heavy rain and melt-off from the heavy snows of the winter. Flood stage for the river in Goshen is 7 feet; at the time the drone took this footage, the river hadn't even quite crested to its record-setting 11.94 feet.

We're still dealing with heat and humidity, which apparently this round of rain isn't going to help much, as our temps for this week look to remain hot. We have the potential for some nasty storms this evening--our weatherman this morning has already said one model is predicting bowing, which indicates strong winds and, of course, could be a precursor to a derecho or tornado, neither of which I want to see. (Sorry, storm chasers, I'd rather not experience another tornado, thank you. Once in a lifetime is enough.) So tonight I will likely have little sleep until the worst storms are over; glad I charged NOAA's (my weather radio) batteries and have charged spares on standby.

So I reached back into my personal LT gallery for this week's critter; I'm going to do a breed of cow. In fairness, I've had a lot of domestic animals as the Critter of the Week, but I've not done cows yet, and this particular breed has an impressive set of horns. While most Americans think of Texas longhorns as being the cattle breed with the most impressive sets of horns (a 7 foot spread from tip to tip, max), the African breed known as the Ankole can top that by a foot! Check out these fine fellows' horns:



Why would any breed of cattle need horns like these? You're thinking predators? It's true that Ankole cattle will fend off predators pretty well, the males forming a circle around the calves and cows, heads facing out, like the American bison does. But there's another good thing about those horns. The Ankole is from an area in Africa that can reach temperatures of 120 degrees Fahrenheit, so cooling off is a must. The horns have blood vessels that carry heat away from their bodies through the tips, the blood cooling as it travels through them and returning significantly less hot to the body. These cattle are well-adapted to live in hot climates with little water and poor grazing. While red coats are the most traditional and common, they can come in many different colors.

The cattle are used for meat and milk products, and though the cows have small udders, they produce milk that tends to be high in butterfat content, making up for quality in what it lacks for quantity. (A Holstein cow can produce up to 25 times the amount of milk, so there have been cross-breeding attempts to increase milk production.) Native tribes also ingest the cattle's blood and urine, the latter which can be mixed with milk to produce a laxative--I'll personally stick to a high fiber diet, thanks. But an interesting legend says that a long-ago king became alarmed that the cattle had become extinct in his tribe and that he shot a magic arrow into the sky, causing it to rain. After 4 days of rain, on the 5th day, the rain stopped and the cattle were everywhere. It actually, as a breed, is under threat in its native country, as wars, loss of grazing land to encroaching cities, and crossbreeding have threatened to dilute or destroy the breed. There are about 1,500 of these cattle outside of Africa, most in the U.S. The local zoo in South Bend, Potawatomi, has two and is where the above picture was taken.

Lepidoptera update:

Monarchs 3.0 have really hit their stride now, with this third generation varying from egg stage to large caterpillar (4th & some 5th instars), with the bulk being between 1st and 3rd instars or still as eggs. Yep, still finding eggs. In fact, last night I probably found about 2-3 dozen more, along with some caterpillars of the 2nd and 3rd instar stages. Last year's monarch showing was decent; this year's is phenomenal! I'm hoping this isn't an Indiana only thing; a few years back, that happened--every state but a couple (and Indiana wasn't one of them) had poor monarch numbers, and the overall population hit a low point that made me cringe. I want this year to be another rebound year for the population!

Milkweed tussock moths: Normally, I collect these with the monarchs, and by now, I should be seeing a bunch of them. This year, however, I'm just not finding that many. Not sure why, but I have a couple and have seen a couple out and about, but have decided not to actively seek them out, only collecting them on the side. Since they only are competitive with monarchs when food is scarce, they do well sharing tanks so they simply get put in with monarchs of approximately the same age.

Hornworms: So the one white-lined sphinx and the plethora of Carolina sphinxes (a.k.a. tobacco hornworms) have all gone to ground or at least have made their cocoons on top of it. No more Jimsonweed harvests, which is nice for my nose, as cut Jimsonweed stinks to high heaven. Also, it means one less food plant to harvest, except that I've picked up a couple more to take its place (see below).

Swallowtails: I now have a decent population of two species: the blacks and the spicebush. The spicebush swallowtails have just begun to show up in force, while the black swallowtails are winding down. In fact, half my black species are in chrysalis or prepping for it, which is good, as the Queen Anne's lace I've been feeding them is drying up fast now (though the rain a couple of days ago has helped slow that a little). With luck, next year I'll end up with a whopping 13 black swallowtails (sadly, anymore, this is like a bumper crop of black swallowtails for me). The spicebush swallowtails, after a very poor start to their season, seem to be making up for lost time, and I have several dozen in various instar stages, including one that just hatched yesterday from its egg. So while I no longer have Jimsonweed, now I'm harvesting sassafras leaves (which I also get mainly from the horse pasture with the milkweed, so I gather both at once).

Tiger moth: I have one solitary Virginia tiger moth, or yellow bear/yellow woolly bear caterpillar. It's eating weeds I can readily gather from the yard, so this isn't that much more work, and there's only the one, gathered by accident with another foodplant. Though they're called yellow bears, they come in a variety of colors, and this one is orange. For this reason, I tend to use the Virginia tiger moth name more often to avoid confusion.

I'll have to get some pictures of these guys to post. This weekend, I'll unearth all the hornworms to verify which are viable cocoons (I found fly pupae in the tanks, meaning someone had parasites and their cocoon is probably therefore dead) and line them up in one tank on top of a layer of sand, to prep them for coming inside for the winter. I also need to start digging out a couple more tanks to use this fall for monarchs, as I suspect I'll need them.

>31 CassieBash: looking forward to your pictures!

The swallowtail tank, with food plants for the spicebush swallowtails on the left and food plants for the black swallowtails on the right.



Black swallowtail chrysalis with another prepping to make a chrysalis using the first as an anchor. This happens and doesn't seem to effect the outcome, as I've had no issues with emergences linked to this phenomenon.



Black swallowtail caterpillars doing their thing.



A spicebush swallowtail showing off the false eye spots to great effect. Yeah, if I were a bird, I might think "snake".



My older sister brought home a monarch caterpillar found on a milkweed outside her workplace office in an industrial park. She figures "Lolly", as she's named her, is that much closer to Mexico, plus she doesn't have to contend with the heavy truck traffic of Elkhart now. She'll be released this fall from our house in the country. She's the one on the lid. I added a friend in preparation for a presentation I'll be doing at the college for an elementary education class, on bringing nature into the classroom. I'll add a few smaller ones to the mix closer to the presentation date. Gotta love those small, portable carriers.



Except that "small" and "portable" only go so far when you count your caterpillar numbers by the hundreds. I must have about 200 monarchs alone by now between the egg and chrysalis stages, and probably four or five dozen spicebush swallowtails. So larger tanks with the capability of holding smallish caterpillars is a must. This tank is my medium monarch caterpillar tank, where those not yet up to 5th instar stay but they're big enough that a fine mesh keeps them in.



The fifth instars have their own tank.



Eventually, the lid will be so full of chrysalises that I'll have to either switch lids or start another tank for the 5th instars.



These two containers hold the first instars and the eggs, respectively. The little grey "line" on the leaf in the first container is a caterpillar, and those white spots on the leaves in the second are eggs.



A couple of the smaller monarchs:



More small monarchs:



These are two hornworm cocoons. The paler brown one on the left is the white lined sphinx, and the darker one on the right is a tobacco hornworm (a rather small one). Notice the bit where the tongue develops on the tobacco hornworm; sphinx/hawk moths have notoriously long tongues, and the Carolina sphinx moth is one of the largest in North America.



Virginia tiger moth caterpillars:



All these species, with the exception of the monarchs, are permanent natives, so they'll winter over. I'm glad that the monarchs don't winter here, because that would take up a lot of space in the barn or basement. One of the reasons I decided against collecting red admirals after generation one was over was because I wanted to concentrate mainly on those species that have that permanence. I'm glad that all the foodplants needed are conveniently located, as gathering enough food, especially for the monarchs and spicebush swallowtails, is always problematic when you have so many. The Queen Anne's lace is beginning to fade quickly, but I can get organic parsley at my local food store to help stretch out the supply and to provide ample food for the black swallowtails. My weed-eating tiger moth caterpillar's food plants are easy to gather, as they're not too picky--in fact, if I had to, I could feed them again on the same plant I found them on--milkweed!

So my mom fell and broke her right arm in two places late yesterday afternoon--fortunately cleanly, so she's not having a lot of pain. But they have splinted it and put it in a sling at the ER, and they're working on setting up an appointment with a specialist. My sisters and I were up late, I didn't sleep well, so understandably, my thoughts haven't been on a Critter of the Week. If anyone wants to post one for me, that's fine with me. Otherwise, it can wait a week or so. (Next week is the first week of our semester, and I'm still the only staff member in the library, so the critter posts may be put on hold for a little bit.)

Sorry to hear about your mom! I'll mention her in my prayers.

Just a quick note about my Leps:

Had 10 monarchs emerge in the past 3 days. I'm still seeing adults laying eggs as well as finding caterpillars. Parasites and disease are becoming more common as we get further into this generation but nothing too bad yet. I keep finding caterpillars and eggs when gathering food, which of course means that I need to gather still more food when I find the cats, which generally means more caterpillars found...you get the idea. Feeding this army is going to take a lot of work, and I've expanded the 5th instars into a second tank.

Swallowtails (spicebush) are also taking off in the same direction as the monarchs, which will mean a lot of overwintering chrysalises. So far, disease hasn't really been an issue and there have been few losses--but with the swallowtails, usually the problems are the unseen parasitic wasps, which won't make themselves known until they emerge from the chrysalis in the spring. I have no idea how many wasps I may be harboring yet, of course, as they leave no signs of their existence. I did obtain one late black swallowtail from my Queen Anne's lace, which is all turning brown, so while out grocery shopping, I picked up some fresh organic parsley. Along with the black swallowtail, I picked up a couple of gray inchworms. We'll see if they eat parsley too, or if they're going to be picky and insist on the lace.

I told myself I wasn't going to collect another species but with all hornworms gone to ground--literally, since that's where they cocoon--I have taken on four question mark caterpillars that I just happened to come across while collecting food for other species. They eat elm or stinging nettle, both of which are readily available, but since there are a lot of unwanted elms in the pasture where I'm already gathering food for monarchs and spicebush swallowtails, guess what they're eating? I need to read a bit about whether they winter over or are like the admirals and repopulate every spring from the southern states. It'd be nice to know if I'm going to be wintering their chrysalises over, too.

>36 CassieBash: I love reading about your husbandry.

Critter of the Week has returned, with a most unusual creature in our neck of the woods--the camel cricket!



I'm guessing it's called that because of the hunched way it looks, as if it's got a hump. I'm used to seeing field and house crickets (though I can't tell one from the other, if there is an actual distinction), but this guy was something new. Interestingly, these are also called cave or spider crickets (I'm guessing the latter refers to those long, thin legs) and they like damp, cool places--not something our yard has been recently. This one was caught in the barn, in the hay.

They have incredibly long antennae, which scientists believe they rely upon heavily to navigate, as they tend to be nocturnal. Unlike field and house crickets, these guys love to munch fabric and if they do make it inside your house, which isn't often, they can be a pest. Apparently, dry weather can force them inside, particularly to your basement (which often in older homes tend to be damp and dark, especially if unfinished or partially finished). Like other crickets, they don't tend to bite and they don't spread disease, but they might give you a scare, because they tend to try to frighten predators away by actually jumping towards them. They are also unusual in that, unlike other crickets, they don't make noise. Nope. Not a chirp. Instead, they use pheromones--possibly another reason for those long antennae, which may act as scent receptors.

Sadly for the camel cricket, not too many websites sing its praises or even simply discuss it as an important part of the environment. Go ahead and Google it, and if you throw out the Wikipedia page (which also mentions the nuisance factor), count how many talk about it as a pest and how to get rid of it. Six of the 10 results on the first page distinctly mention it as a pest, and the others all talk about it as something to get rid of. Poor little guy. I think he's cute--but then, he hasn't had a nibble from my wardrobe....

>38 CassieBash: we used to have those all over the yard when we lived in SC. They do indeed startle you but jumping towards you.

We used to catch them and feed them to our chickens.

>We used to catch grasshoppers and give them to kittens. It probably went somewhat better for the grasshoppers, particularly if they were adults and had wings, than it did for your crickets. FYI for those of you with chickens: be careful what you feed to them as far as insects and other invertebrates--grasshoppers and other creepy crawly critters may harbor poultry parasites. The Missouri Department of Conservation even warns about this.

Oh, and an update to monarchs: 6 emerged yesterday, including Lolly from >33 CassieBash:, who was aptly named, as she did indeed turn out to be a female. The day before, I had a pair--one male, one female. I have so many now that a few deaths, mostly from parasites, in each tank daily isn't unusual, especially since I'm finding more daily--probably collected around 20 plus some eggs yesterday just harvesting more food. Yet one tank--the one for the intermediate instars (2-4) had no deaths yesterday at all, so that's encouraging to an extent. The good news about parasitic deaths is that it's confined to just that one caterpillar; they aren't communicable and the others are safe. Disease is a far more concerning issue, and so far (knock on wood), I haven't had such an infestation that it's become a widespread issue. Parasites, mostly the tachinid flies, have been much more common, and I'm still doing research on whether these parasites can lay their eggs in monarch eggs or just the caterpillars, as I've had some first instars I've suspected have died from these.

Here's Lolly, right before she took off:



I'm still finding more eggs and caterpillars than what die each day from parasites; while I may lose a dozen, I'm collecting twice that or more (yesterday was more!). So far, I'm only seeing monarch larvae and eggs on the traditional milkweeds (common, swamp, butterfly weed), but the common milkweed, by far the most...er...common food plant, is beginning to turn yellow and drop leaves. This year may be the first year I'll try feeding 5th instar caterpillars on something other than milkweed (do I want to feed them on cucumbers and have green caterpillar poop, or pumpkin or butternut squash and have orange caterpillar poop?). I understand that works well in a pinch if you have big ones that are close to making their chrysalis. As for the smaller caterpillars, after many years of relatively undisturbed growth and reproduction, our back pasture's "crop" of whorled milkweed is getting to be a good size....

A whorled milkweed in bloom:





Yep, all those spindly, yellow-green pine tree-like things are all whorled milkweed plants in our back pasture. Sure looks good enough to eat (if you're a monarch caterpillar). Push comes to shove, monarchs and milkweed tussock moths will be eating those, stripping the stems and then chewing on those if they get desperate enough. I can feed the oldest cats on cucumbers, squash, or pumpkin, but if I start getting down to the wire with a lot of little ones left to feed and no viable common milkweed, guess what's next to be harvested? The nice thing about whorled milkweed is that it's drought-resistant and stays greener longer than the other varieties.

Unfortunately, though I do my best to get to the caterpillars before the parasites do, I can't seem to get them all fast enough--which is of course why I raise some that end up with parasites despite my best attempts. This poor guy didn't get found by me before he was found by parasites.



Not to get too gross, but see that white string hanging down? (I know the picture is blurry--sorry--but I think you can see them well enough to know what I'm talking about.) That's a sure sign that a parasite (or several--there's usually an entire invasion in there) has been at work. That, and the funny color, sort of a rosy brown. If it had been disease instead, the monarch would likely have turned black and mushy. Again, not to seem too morbid, but sometimes if you have a caterpillar with parasites that are just getting ready to emerge, you can actually feel them inside the caterpillar if you handle it, because the caterpillar will feel limp and empty, and the parasites will be firm bumps inside it.

Yesterday was a very slow release day, with one leaf roller (that I didn't even know I had!) and one male monarch. I'm up to five question mark caterpillars in addition to one in its chrysalis, for a total of 6. Apparently, I won't have to worry about their wintering over, as they will either do so as adults or they will migrate south, so I'll be releasing them when they emerge this fall. This is good, since my swallowtail and hornworm populations are plenty to go into cold storage this fall, so to speak.

Last evening I had two ladies and one gentleman monarch emerge. Out of curiosity regarding losses and gains, I went ahead and counted my losses--15--and my gains--27 caterpillars and 8 eggs. Even if you count the two dead caterpillars, likely killed by parasites or predators, that I found in the wild yesterdays, the gains are still much more than the losses right now. There will come a time close to the end of the season, when the females stop laying, that losses will likely outnumber gains, but that's to be expected when there are no gains out there to get. (Did anyone follow that?) But I imagine that by then, the emergences will outnumber the losses until the very tail end.

One of my gains was a caterpillar making his J shape on the underside of the horse tank--not a safe place. So I very carefully removed him. Though he isn't hanging upside down as is their custom, he did successfully pupate, his name is now Tank, and he's resting comfortably in an open container in my room until I move him out this weekend. I need to do some "re-arranging" of tanks and prep yet another for the monarch invasion so that I can spread out the population still more. Whew! What a lot of work they are this year--but it's worth it!

By the way, before anyone asks about the 2nd monarch, seen at the bottom of the picture, yes, I did notice and collect him that day.

I learn so much reading your threads.

We have a Sycamore tree so we get...Sycamore tussock moth caterpillars! I often see one or two on our mailbox, which is directly under the tree. A couple weeks ago I spotted a small caterpillar on the mailbox, but left it alone. Last week I saw a bigger one, but he was covered with parasite cocoons, all over his back. Silly, but I felt sorry for him.

>43 fuzzi: Why is it silly to feel sorry for him? I can't imagine what it would feel like to be eaten from the inside out. Nasty. I feel sorry for my monarchs when they have them--but there's nothing you can do, so I discard them (they make a mess of the tank when the tachinid fly maggots/pupae come out).

9 monarchs emerged yesterday, and while I don't remember the exact numbers, others did emerge both Friday and Saturday. I've been having monarchs emerge pretty much every day recently--sometimes only one or two, other times a half dozen or more. The patch where I found the dead caterpillar in >41 CassieBash: has been yielding monarch caterpillars daily for the past four or five days; I'm making it part of my regular rounds no matter which patch I harvest food from, just in case I missed someone.

My most exciting Lep news is that I finally found a tiger swallowtail caterpillar on our poplar, on branches close enough to the ground for me to collect. Now I feel as if my swallowtail collection will be complete this year; it doesn't seem right if I don't raise all three native to this area. While I'd love to have a zebra, giant, or pipevine swallowtail, none of those species are common up this way--pawpaws, pipevine, and citrus plants don't tend to grow up here--though the northern prickly ash should be OK, being zoned for as far north as 3. We're supposedly a 5--but we have to baby plants that are zoned for 5 and up--we tend to think of ourselves as a safe and solid 4--which just happens to be OK for hops trees, too, which along with the prickly ash, just happens to be acceptable hosts for giant swallowtails. It's the only reason I can think of why I would plant a hops tree, not being much into beer and even less so since my surgery and the doctor's dietary restriction of alcohol. Still, for these beauties, it might just be worth it. Imagine having a bunch of these fluttering around your flowers:


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Giant_Swallowtail%2C_Shirley...
By D. Gordon E. Robertson - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33484737

They're even prettier on the underside:


Adult, underside: Picture of Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) taken at the Hershey Gardens Butterfly house.
By Queerbubbles CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), from Wikimedia Commons

So let's just go ahead and make the giant swallowtail, Papilio cresphontes, the largest butterfly in North America, this week's Critter.

This butterfly has quite a native range, found as far south as Columbia and Venezuela and as far north as southern Canada, when conditions are right--but they are fragile in winter and can only overwinter in the southernmost states--though I suspect my basement would probably work. :) However, their preferred food plants, members of the citrus family, as noted above tend not to be common up this way, with the exception of the northern prickly ash. In fact, this is a species that is often considered a pest in citrus groves, and the nickname for the caterpillars, orange dog or orange puppy, points towards which citrus crop on which they can most commonly be found. In fact, the one or two years long ago when I raised them, my mom had a dwarf orange tree, upon which I found a couple of larvae and which I surreptitiously raised. Raising garden "pest" species on alternatives was seen as OK, so as long as my hornworms were content with horse nettle or my black swallowtail caterpillars ate Queen Anne's lace, that was allowed. But with no alternatives for citrus crops, I had to be careful about raising them. Because the females like to lay eggs on new growth, younger trees are often heavily targeted.

Like other members of the swallowtail caterpillars, orange dogs have osmeteria, little fleshy filaments, generally forked, that the caterpillar can expand or retract out from their heads. They are thought to mimic snake tongues and, as if that's not cool enough, it has an unpleasant odor that may repel insect predators, including the dreaded praying mantis. Because many swallowtail caterpillars also have eyespots, the tongue osmeteria/eyespot combination can, with only a little imagination, form a snake face. As if that defense isn't enough, it also starts its life as a small brown and white caterpillar with hue and markings that mimic bird droppings--another common swallowtail thing--though unlike my spicebush and tiger swallowtail caterpillars which turn green as they proceed through their instar stages, the giant swallowtail caterpillar remains brown and white and dropping-esque. And like other swallowtails, they attach themselves to vertical or horizontal structures with two side supports as well as their posterior support pad, forming half a heart shape instead of the J shape that vertical free-hangers, like monarchs, form.

Another 6 or so monarch emergences. Once more, I collected at least half a dozen monarch caterpillars from that milkweed stand last night--and some of them were in their final instars. Honestly, I don't know how I'm missing them....

Unfortunately, while the parasite losses have been daily, I hadn't seen much disease recently--until last night. In one tank, at least three caterpillars had succumbed to something (monarch diseases apparently tend to make them black and mushy when they die, regardless of what disease it might be), so of course I changed out the "bedding" (paper towels) and changed the food, but we'll see. I'm not sure I want to move any of the caterpillars to another tank, as that might just spread it to other, uninfected tanks, but you can bet there won't be any more going into that tank until I see what happens with the spread of the disease. I've had a few caterpillars succumb to disease in a tank but the others have been fine, so hopefully that's what happens here.

I have two mystery caterpillars; I thought perhaps they were a color variant of a buckeye butterfly larva, but have since changed my opinion because yesterday, one of them made a cocoon. Not a chrysalis--a cocoon. That means it can't be a butterfly; it has to be a moth of some sort. I need to snap a picture of the other before it, too, makes a cocoon.

>44 CassieBash: that's one butterfly I've yet to spot, and we have some citrus type trees growing in the wooded lot next door. I've seen Black, Eastern Tiger, Palamedes, Spicebush, and Pipevine swallowtails since I started IDing them.

>46 fuzzi: I see them every once in awhile, but not often. I don't know of any host plants nearby since my mom's tree died.

2 monarchs emerged yesterday. Parasites are causing a lot of loss and while there's still a few diseased monarchs, the worst hasn't happened, at least not yet. I'm cautiously optimistic about the chances of the other caterpillars in the tank, at least those that won't die of parasites. Many, many caterpillars are making chrysalises, which of course is good--though a few of the chrysalises also show signs of parasites/disease, and are removed once confirmed. Still, I should have a strong showing by the end of the summer.

And yes, I did go back out to the patch of milkweed and gathered about 8 or so from that area--several of which were 4th and 5th instars. Where do they all come from??? And how am I not seeing them the other six times I've been out there?!? :))

Despite the seemingly never-ending supply of monarchs from that one milkweed grove, I can tell that the monarchs have been getting desperate for milkweed by the numbers I find not only as individuals on a single plant, but by how many milkweed plants are now being asked to support multiple monarch larvae.

My record number of monarch caterpillars found on a single milkweed so far numbers six:



While there's still a large number of milkweed out there, they are beginning to die back, and the bottom-most leaves on most of them are turning yellow or brown and dropping off. I'm seriously considering turning one tank specifically into a 5th instar only tank and feeding organic cucumber, which I think will be the most convenient for me regarding availability and preparation, to those able to digest it. Maybe I'll try a little of both, because I can see that while cucumber, which slices easily, is convenient regarding preparation, in our Indiana heat and humidity, pumpkin on the rind might stay fresher longer. Thoughts, anyone? Has anyone reading this actually tried this with monarchs?

One monarch and one question mark emerged. Yesterday's black death in all four major monarch tanks was pretty bad, with probably around 12-15 or so--though considering the numbers I have, that's still pretty low. But no sign of disease tonight in any of the tanks--though parasite death was still taking a bit of a toll. Still, I've had a lot make their chrysalises successfully and even half-watched one in the process tonight as I cleaned tanks. Several others are showing signs that they're soon going to follow, with greenish casts to their skins as they hang upside down in the J position. The spicebush swallowtails are also really beginning to make their chrysalises in earnest, with several turning orange--swallowtail caterpillars often change color right before making their chrysalises. After a little unnecessary concern on my part regarding Tiger, the tiger swallowtail caterpillar who stopped eating and went limp, he's back to eating after molting. It's very hard to tell if a caterpillar is dying or molting sometimes so I try to give them the benefit of the doubt in these cases. Still have a few question mark larvae and even a few inchworms and yellow bears--though only one is yellow. The rest are of varying colors, including white, black, and of course the ever-common orange.

>48 CassieBash: never tried raising any butterflies, so I've no idea.

I wish I could ship you some of my milkweed, have LOTS, and until a couple days ago the only feeders were milkweed bugs. I did find two LARGE milkweed caterpillars this week, though I've been searching the plants for caterpillars all summer.

>50 fuzzi: I wish I could ship you some monarchs! :)

And speaking of....

So far 6 males and 4 females have emerged, with at least 2 more likely to come out by day's end. Every day this weekend, I've had a few, but today was the first time in awhile that I've had over half a dozen. I'm still finding a few eggs and of course caterpillars in droves--especially from the milkweed grove. Every day I go to the grove, thinking that this time I will only find a couple at best--and then I find at least half a dozen, and generally large ones at that. If I didn't know any better l, would say that stand of milkweed spontaneously generates them.

The spicebush swallowtails are doing well, with several now turning orange and making chrysalises, but I still have plenty of the brown and white second instars and the green, older instars. The yellow bears are happy, eating milkweed (is there anything Virginian tiger moth caterpillars don't eat?) right alongside the Monarchs, and I found what I suspect is a prominent of some sort on our barn door, probably having fallen from the hackberry that grows just outside of the barn. My suspicions of its host plant were pretty much confirmed when I put it and a bit of hackberry in with the question marks, and it began sharing elm with them. Hackberries are a type of elm, but their leaves wilt faster than the American elm when cut, so if I can feed American elm to a species instead, I do so. While tawny emperors and hackberry butterflies insist on hackberry, many other elm-eaters, including question marks and eastern commas, will eat both. This prominent, like the question marks, clearly isn't picky.

>51 CassieBash: no need! They're here! I've had one Monarch flitting around the backyard and laying eggs on the milkweed for more than a week. Yesterday I saw two Monarchs at the same time, and then discovered that I'm inundated with caterpillars, munch munch munching away at the milkweed, yippee!!

Speaking of spontaneous generation, I have a goldfish living in one of my water garden tubs...the tubs were purchased this Spring and set up shortly thereafter. I didn't put it in there, and I've not had goldfish at all for two or three years...so HOW did it get in the tub? :D

>52 fuzzi: Maybe a neighbor who needed to get rid of a fish? My dad put a catfish he caught on one of his fishing excursions into the water tank for the horses one year as a practical joke.

Unlikely, my backyard is rather inaccessible, and I don't know any of the neighbors well enough for that sort of joke.

Found this on the web:

The far less captivating reason is that, by some sort of mistake, either you or Mother Nature, have unwittingly moved these fish into their new home. Fish can be introduced into new ponds in quite a few ways. Eggs or fry can be carried in on the feet or mouths of water foul and other animals, or can be clinging onto some aquatic plants you decided to add to your pond. Sometimes flooding can wash fish from nearby ponds, lakes, and streams into your pond.

The flooding explanation would not work, as my pond is higher than the ground, and there are no bodies of water nearby.

I suspect birds brought fish eggs on their legs, or it could be that I got an egg on Parrot feather I put in the ponds earlier this year. I don't see goldfish in the two ponds, though, just the tub.

>54 fuzzi: Intriguing....

With the hot and humid weather, we're seeing these little critters everywhere now... and they tickle!





No, this week's Critter isn't a bee. It's a fly--the hover fly, to be precise.

Actually, hover flies are an entire family of flies, and very good flies they are, too. No, really! I know we all think of flies as being gross, but these flies are a gardener's delight. As young larvae, they eat either decaying animal and vegetable matter or are insectivores, eating small pests such as thrips and aphids. Because of this, hover flies have been used as a natural pest control, joining the ranks of such esteemed insects as praying mantises, ladybugs, and lacewings (which are another type of fly, by the way). As adults, they are important pollinators, so much so that many scientists say they are the second-best pollinators, right behind bees. But the adult hover flies--at least ours--also like to eat the sweat from your arms and legs, and they can often be mistaken, due to their mimicry, as a sweat bee. But since the hover flies are...well...flies, they don't have stingers. The worst thing they can do is give you a case of accidental myiasis if you accidentally ingest their larvae but this is rare, and the most they usually do is tickle you when they try to feed on your sweat.

Once again, this family of insects is found worldwide, with the common exception of Antarctica. With 6,000 species, this is one of the most diverse families of flies, living in almost every type of habitat except for high altitude tundras and deserts (and obviously the cold wastelands of Antarctica, which very few, if any, insects manage to conquer).

>55 CassieBash: I've seen and photographed these in my gardens, their eyes are the giveaway that they're not bees.

>56 fuzzi: That, and the wings. Bees seldom sit with their wings spread out to the sides like that; usually, they fold their wings over their back.

More monarch larvae found in the grove; each time I go out now, I think I surely must have exhausted the supply, and expect to find, at most, a couple. Instead, I'm still coming back, even with daily checks, with at least 6 monarch caterpillars. Yesterdays saw the emergence of a dozen more monarchs and a couple of question mark butterflies; because it's so late by the time I get home, no one wanted to stick around, so there are no pictures of yesterday's butterflies. Bummer.

But I do have pictures of butterflies from this weekend! Huzzah!

One of the many monarchs to emerge, one of the few to sit still enough to photograph:



The Monarch Collection:



The lid from one of the larger tanks, covered with monarch chrysalises. Notice the three that are darker than the rest--a sort of bluish-black color? They emerged the next day.



Monarchs happily eating fresh food in one of the tanks:



Question mark butterfly, newly emerged:



Question mark chrysalis, side view:



Question mark chrysalis, front view:



The suspected prominent, exact species as yet unknown, on hackberry (later switched to elm):



Totally unknown species of moth. Whatever it is, it likes elm.



Believe it or not, out of all the species shown here, only two host plants were needed: milkweed for the monarchs, and elm for everyone else. For a tree that leaves a lot of branches lying around the yard whenever a stiff breeze comes up, it certainly has a lot of usefulness to the Lepidoptera world.

I checked my milkweed last night, and several of the plants are stripped of leaves, wow. It's a (welcome) invasion of Monarchs!!

>58 fuzzi: Yay!

That grove is still giving me monarchs, but it's taking me a bit longer to spot them. I did get my six or seven out of it last night, but we'll see how many I get from it tonight. It just can't keep it up--if only because the overall number of monarchs is dwindling as time marches steadily towards migration time.

Picture time!

For those of you who may remember how I lost my blue fish last year in the War of the Great Blue Heron, I received as a present a new blue fish. Meet Blue Thunder. I forget why I named it Thunder--I've had him for awhile, but I haven't been able to get a good picture for a couple of months, because he was small and shy. He's shy no longer....



Then there was the issue of being able to pick him out of a crowd during a feeding frenzy, which was when he was most likely to appear....



Been seeing a lot of these guys around; I believe they're pearly crescents:

>59 CassieBash: pretty blue! I don't see him in the feeding frenzy picture, though...

I think you are correct, re: Pearl Crescents. We get those here, too, though I don't think I've seen any this year.

Are those Black-eyed Susans?

>60 fuzzi: Yeah, I don't see him there, either; he tends to swim underneath the bigger fish so he can catch their crumbs. The Crescents are everywhere up here right now; I can't walk by those black-eyed Susans on a nice day and not have a cloud just swarm up.

Friday saw a whopping 22 monarchs and 2 question mark butterflies emerge; the day was rather nice for it, although a little cloudy. Saturday was decent but cooler and cloudy, yet I still had a question mark and 14 monarchs. But with the remnants of the southern storm working its way up as a combination of rain and cold, and with the rather chilly and wet day yesterday, only a couple of monarchs decided to come out.

Wonder of wonders--by Saturday, the milkweed grove seems to have run out of offerings, or at least nearly so. While I still find one or two there, there was a significant drop from Friday's 8 to Saturday's two found. In fact, while I'm still finding monarch cats, the numbers seem to have finally dropped drastically, which is normal for this time of year. Caterpillars that haven't yet got a good start on growing may find it difficult from now on to find food, to have decent temperatures for growth and development, plus the deadline to make the yearly migration.... Yes, it's about time the monarchs stopped showing up as eggs and caterpillars and start really coming out as mature(ish) adults. Remember--monarchs on migration are only half-adults, unable to mate and lay eggs until after they've hibernated through the winter. Ain't nature cool?

Critter time! This week it's the sandhill crane. Late last week, our pasture was the site for a few days' worth of activity from these large, magnificent (and very noisy!) birds. Like the turkeys, the cranes were wary of me; unlike the turkeys, though, they didn't trust me to get too close. Wild turkeys are either very brave, or confident that we're not going to hurt them. The cranes seem to want to play it safer.





Indiana is a big part of the crane migration path, and they're practically the poster birds for the Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area just a bit south and west of where I live. Apparently, it's quite a sight to see the cranes there during the migration seasons, when they congregate in huge numbers (think in the thousands) there. And some stick around to have their families here in the northern part of the state.

I first knew they were in our field by the unusual sounds they make, which you can listen to here. The sounds, which can be heard up to 2.5 miles away, is made by an extremely long windpipe that coils deep in the birds' chests on its way to the lungs, which causes some great reverberation. These birds are among the biggest in Indiana, with only the great blue heron their only competition. I'm not certain which is the larger, but it's easy enough to tell at a glance--especially in flight--which you're seeing. Great blue herons tend to tuck their heads into an S shape, and even in flight they tend to tuck their necks, giving them a peculiar and unforgettable silhouette. Cranes tend to keep their throats straight and in flight they are much like geese, with necks stretched out full, only bigger. The great blue heron also has head plumes that stick out, while a crane's head is unadorned except for the distinctive red spot on top. Sandhills are omnivorous and eat anything from seeds and nuts to insects, fish, and small mammals. Like herons, they are wetlands birds, preferring to nest in vegetation like cattails and tall grasses, laying 1-3 eggs of a pale golden brown or olive color, with brown or gray markings. If threatened, they will use their long, sharp beaks (longer than their actual heads) to stab and if they are attacked from above, they will leap into the air and kick. Courtship is a dance (literally) and once a partnership is formed, they're mated for life.

>62 CassieBash: at least you got pictures, wow!

>63 fuzzi: I did! We've talked about hopping over/down to the J-P Fish & Wildlife with mom, who's really the birder among us, to see the migration. I believe it peaks in late October/early November, and they have a recommended viewing field where you can get close but not too close to them. Considering that they're wild birds, they actually let me get fairly close, so using the zoom on the iPhone (the Nikon is awkward to carry with me when I'm collecting caterpillars and food) worked fairly well. Perhaps, over the weekend, they'll be back and I can get the Nikon out and snap some with a real camera. I promise to share if I get the chance to do so.

Well, yesterday was another cool day, but sunny at least. One lonely male monarch emerged, but I had three question mark butterflies ready to fly immediately. By the time I get home, around 6:30 PM Mondays--Thursdays, most of my little ones are.

Spicebush swallowtails are really going to town now, with more and more of the brown youngsters turning green, while the green turn orange and the orange turn into chrysalises. Next spring, I'll be releasing clouds of swallowtails, or clouds of parasitic wasps, or clouds of both. With hardly any deaths (there have been one or two here and there throughout the weeks, but most days I suffer no losses in this tank), I should have plenty of chances to have successful butterfly emergences. I would hope that the parasites haven't gotten so numerous as to be the vast majority out of dozens of chrysalises--though it can happen. Usually, my experience with an uptick in parasites means that the next year's butterfly population decreases sharply, followed by a year or so of sharp decline of the parasites while things try to balance. Usually, balance is restored and this up-and-down cycle continues naturally, with the exception of the tachinid fly, Compsilura concinnataone. This species was purposely introduced to the States to control the accidentally introduced gypsy moth and which now, of course, preys indiscriminately upon almost all our native caterpillars, particularly the Cecropia, whose populations have dropped in large part due to this fly.

I still have about 5 or so monarch eggs, but most are now caterpillars and most of those are 4th and 5th instars, prepping to make their chrysalises, with a few milkweed and Virginian tiger moth larvae sharing the space. (It really is amazing how many general feeding caterpillar species can use milkweed as a food source.) I have three or so small, soft gray caterpillars that aren't Virginian tigers--they lack the long hairs--but they aren't unexpected cycnias, either, which have orange-colored bodies and tufted hair, rather than a uniform covering such as these, with no tufts such as dagger and tussock moths have. A quick check suggests that they're delicate cycnias, or the dogbane cycnia, a species I've never yet raised. The cycnias, by the way, are part of the same family as tiger moths, so I currently have three representatives of the family.

The unknown moth from post 57-- I photographed a very similar unknown moth over the weekend...decided it was Henry's Marsh Moth--page 338 in Caterpillars of Eastern North America

>65 jljames1_79: Oh, yeah, that does look like him! Thanks! Never raised one of these before, so this is another first, like the delicate cycnia.

2 more monarchs have emerged. The cold nights have probably slowed the development of all my caterpillars somewhat. This always happens in the fall when we have a cold front come through (because cold fronts are actually cold and not just a slight dip into the upper 70s/lower 80s by September). After this last weekend's chilly highs (the lower and mid 60s) and the dampness that came from the rain, the temps are slowly back on the rise and are supposed to be back into the 80s again for the weekend and the beginning of next week, at which point they drop again. It's the Indiana fall weather roller coaster! Frankly, I love the 70s, especially with low humidity, and these comfy lows are great for sleeping. I could do without the morning commute to work in the fog, however....

With warmer temperatures comes more emergences! 9 monarchs, an almost even split between males and females; 3 stuck around on my finger long enough for me to whisper a prayer to them. Safe travels, little ones!

Checking in while we still have power.

The frogs are singing, the Green and Southern Leopard that is. One sounds a little like fingers strumming a comb...

>68 fuzzi: Hope you weather the storm well.

Nuts, can't remember Friday's release count--there were some monarchs. Today there were 10 monarchs, mostly males.

Yesterday there were 17 monarchs--10 ladies, 7 gents. A bird got one of the ladies--well, hope that bird has learned a lesson. It usually doesn't take more than one bitter, vomit-inducing monarch for most creatures to learn to avoid them. It was probably a young and inexperienced bird.

I have one large tank and one tiny tank of monarch larvae left, with a couple of tiger moth larvae sharing the space. Mostly what's still keeping me hopping are the swallowtails, which I'm still finding small brown larvae for, though a lot of mine have turned orange and made their chrysalises. The tank requires daily cleaning (and yesterday, because I was home and had time to do it, it got cleaned twice) because swallowtails, more than any other species I know, purge their insides before making a chrysalis. Makes sense, though--if I were going to go to sleep for 6-8 months, I'd want a long bathroom break beforehand, too. Spicebush swallowtail purges seem messier than the other two species I raise (black and tiger), perhaps because their food plant, sassafras, has toxins in it and they are passing out some of those along with unnecessary food. All of the question marks have now made chrysalises, and all but one buckeye.

Monarch count: 4 gals and 2 guys last night. Monarchs are slowing down now for sure; I'll have fewer new ones to add and more emergences as the month progresses. It looks like I might just have a few by the first week of October, which is normal. There are always some stragglers.

I just realized I've neglected to choose a critter! For some reason, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi has been in my head recently, so let's look at the mongoose.


Herpestes edwardsii at Hyderaba
By J.M.Garg CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), from Wikimedia Commons

There are actually 29 species of mongoose in the family that includes the meercat (you can see the similarities, providing the meercat you're looking at isn't Timon from The Lion King). Mongooses live mainly in Africa, India, and Madagascar, and their name derives not from the same source as the bird, but from the Indian mungus, which was, of course, altered by the English. Interestingly, this is one of the families in a suborder that includes the families for civets, cats, and most interestingly, hyenas.

There's quite a size difference in the species, which can be as small as a little over 9 inches to almost 23 inches on the large side of the family. All, however, resemble weasels in build; low and lean, with long bodies and relatively small heads, with sharp claws used for digging and sharp teeth used for--what else?--biting. They are, after all, famous for their snake hunting, though they also eat eggs, birds, crabs, insects, rodents, worms, and such, including carrion. Ironically, while they will kill cobras, they tend not to eat them, though mongooses (along with a few other animals) have a sort of immunity to snake venom, thanks to what's called a "receptor pocket" that is different from many other animals' and that keeps the venom from binding to tissue.

Some species are solitary, some live in groups, but all tend to be diurnal (awake during the day). This led to a problem in Hawaii and the West Indies, where someone had the brilliant (that's sarcasm) idea to import mongooses to kill rats that had come to the islands on ships--rats that were killing the native birds and eating their eggs. Problem is, since the mongoose is diurnal and the rats were night creatures--nocturnal--their paths seldom crossed, and the mongooses end up eating--you guessed it!--more native birds and their eggs. And native snakes, and native frogs, and native...you get the picture.

Unfortunately, I don't remember Friday's emergences count, but Saturday's count was easy because it was so cold that there were no emergences. Today, however, was a different matter. With temperatures back up in the 70s, I had 8 healthy monarchs (one clearly had issues emerging and was dead by the time I found it), one buckeye, and one question mark.

I think of fuzzi every time I see a wild turkey because she gets so excited to see the pictures. The moms and their children have been visiting the bird feeders out back on a regular basis recently, but this evening was the first time I caught a tom turkey back there! And he let me get very close, so I've got some great pictures of him to share tomorrow when I have access to something more picture-post friendly than an iPhone.

Want those turkey pictures? Hop on over to my new thread!