I’ve had the flu for the last week or so, so I’ve been inside more, with more time to do blog posts.

The weather has been hot and humid, with plenty of short, wet storms.  It feels like the tropics, and the insects love it.

The beautiful anglewing caterpillars that I collected on elm leaves a few weeks ago pupated, and one hatched – into a Compton Tortoiseshell Butterfly.  (The other was parasitized and it hatched into a fly.)

Here are a few photos of the caterpillar, with its dramatic color changes:

The pupa (chrysalis) – with its shiny gold spots.

And this is the adult butterfly – newly hatched.

It wasn’t interested in holding its wings open, so I didn’t get a good photo of the colorful upper sides.  Here’s an old photo (July 2008) that shows the tops of a Compton Tortoiseshell’s wings.

The underside helps it blend in to its surroundings.  It seems to use the bright upper side to startle predators – it opened and closed its wings quickly when I got too close, showing a flash of bright orange.

I had a wonderful moth experience last week.  I walked up a steep path through the woods, and under a Black Cherry tree that was leaning across the path.

As I walked up to the tree, dozens of small white moths fluttered away.  I looked more closely at the bark of the tree, and found that some moths were still there – although they were so well camouflaged that it was hard to find them.

I checked some of the other trees, but none of them had many moths.  It may be that cherry bark is better for camouflage.

Spiderworts are blooming now – there are more this year than there have ever been before.  They make beautiful blue pools of color in the prairies.

Every once in a while I see a white one.

False Dandelions are blooming in Starflower Opening again.  In pictures they don’t look very different from dandelions, but they have sea green foliage, and oriole colored flowers – a wonderful combination.

Red Spotted Purples and Viceroys are both flying right now.  Clouds of them fly up when we walk on the driveway.  They’re very closely related even though they don’t look much alike.  Their eggs, caterpillars and chrysalises look almost alike, and it’s only when they emerge that I can be sure which species it is.

Red Spotted Purple

Viceroy

This is an Agreeable Tiger Moth – a white moth similar to the Pink-legged Tiger Moth I found last week.

The main difference is that this one has yellow legs (underneath) rather than pink.

My Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar is changing.  Its new skins are making it look less like a bird dropping and more like a snake.

This is another cool moth caterpillar – some kind of Tussock Moth.

And its cocoon – it incorporated some of its long black hairs into the silk.

Dave Linderud and Bill Hogseth from West Wisconsin Land Trust came for their yearly visit.  They visit our easement once a year to be sure all is well.  We did a nice tour of the farm – in the gator because it was so hot and there was a lot to see.