Journal for August 7, 2008

We had a nice visit from some friends from the city. They came for walks, dinner and a sleepover. We had a great time.

Here are the afternoon walkers at Hidden Oaks Point.

Here we are at the bench on the Knife Edge.

The morning walkers.

We walked up to Big View Prairie and back through Western Prairie. Here we are at the bench on Big View Prairie. (We try to include as many benches as possible on our tours.)

A very friendly Hackberry Butterfly flew around and landed on several of us.

Monarda and Yellow Coneflower are blooming now, so the upper prairies look wonderful. Here are some views of Buffalo Ridge Prairie.

We also walked up Western Road.

The Phoebes that lived in a nest above one of our porch windows finally fledged. They sat on the edge of the nest for about 3 days – looking like they were going to fly away any minute.

Even after they fledged, they came back to the nest and fluttered around – as if they were checking to see if they could still fit. Just a moment of fluttering wings and they they’d fly away again.

I’m spending a lot of time these days taking care of my caterpillars.

I have one butterfly caterpillar – one of the Red-spotted Purple eggs hatched, and the caterpillar has been eating willow leaves, and growing fast.

It’s very well camouflaged when it’s on a leaf – its coloring makes it look like a bird dropping.

In the “J” position, in preparation for pupating.

The next day it had made its chrysalis.

I have two tiny unknown caterpillars that are also eating willow. They appeared on the willows I cut for the Red-spotted Purple, and I’ve been waiting to see if I can identify them. They are very small and slender, and their bodies are almost translucent.

They make a nest out of a rolled leaf.

The rest of my caterpillars are all Giant Silk Moths. I have Cecropias, Polyphemus, and Luna caterpillars this year.

This is the first year I’ve had Lunas. I got them from a friend, and I’m very excited about it. They look very much like the Polyphemus caterpillars, but they have a bright yellow horizontal stripe along their sides.

This is one of the earlier instars.

This one is a little older – a later instar.

They’re eating Black Walnut leaves, and are starting to make cocoons.

The polyphemus are huge, and are also starting to make cocoons.

The Cecropias are still small – they have a few more weeks of eating to go.

This Tree Frog was on the side of our house one night, looking for insects to eat.

Some of this week’s butterflies:

Giant Swallowtail

Northern Pearly-eye

Roadside Skipper – the a late record for this species in Wisconsin These butterflies seem to like the pile of cut birch logs on top of Indian Grass Point – I found them there earlier this summer too.

Possibly a Wild Indigo Duskwing. These are very difficult to identify with certainty.

Tiger Swallowtail on Common Milkweed

This is a Sedge Sprite that I saw the day of the butterfly count. It’s a tiny damselfly – only about an inch long – that we saw near our neighbor’s pond.

I’m trying hard to cut and pull all the Sweet Clover in one part of the wetland. The number of plants has increased dramatically in the last few years, and this year it completely fills one of the nicest places that’s visible from the driveway.

So I’ve been spending every morning filling up the gator with sweet clover, and dumping it in the compost pile.

Indian Grass Point is looking good this year. After all the clearing I did last fall and this spring, there are lots of new flowers blooming. I just found a new plant that I haven’t seen there before – White Goldenrod.