The Cecropias have started hatching – I have 17 cocoons and the first one hatched on June 12, exactly the same date as my first one hatched last year. The first 5 were males so I released a couple in St. Paul and the rest at the farm.

Check out the Moths section of the blog for the latest updates on the Cecropias. One of the stories has a series of photos and a video showing a Cecropia emerging from its chrysalis – the first time I’ve watched that happen.

Mike mowed two thirds of Western Field this week – the third that we have planted in prairie, and the middle third that we’ll plant this winter. It’s about 38 acres, and with the tractor zooming around as fast as it could go he got it mowed in one long day!

Here are a couple of bucks that were grazing on the weeds – they would run just out of range of the mower every time he came by.

Walking across the Cat’s Paw Prairie I startled a Field Sparrow – it flew up right under my feet. I searched around and found a nest of hungry babies on the ground, hidden under a bushy plant.

And later I startled a Wild Turkey from her nest in the woods.

There are starting to be some dry prairie plants showing up on the steep slope of Hidden Oaks Point where we cleared last year. This week I found Purple Milkwort(Polygala polygama) just about to bloom.

And there was some Leonard’s Skullcap (Scutellaria parvula var. missouriensis) too. It’s a small, obscure, very pretty plant that only grows on dry prairies.

I’ve been finding many more prairie species in the Cat’s Paw Prairie this year. There’s lots of Northern Bedstraw (Galium boreale).

And for the first time in any of the prairies, I found White Sage (Artemisia ludoviciana).

The butterflies are starting to come back to the driveway after we disturbed their habitat last week. Here’s the first Baltimore Checkerspot I’ve seen this year.

And a Baltimore Checkerspot caterpillar eating a Plantain (Plantago sp.) leaf.

The best butterfly of the week was a Common Ringlet.

These butterflies are normally found much farther north, but they’ve been seen in central Wisconsin more frequently in the last few years, and it looks like their population is shifting to the south.

There are lots of Pearl/Northern Crescents in the fields.

And this week there were lots of Great Spangled Fritillaries.

I found several Black Swallowtail caterpillars on the stalks of Yellow Pimpernel (Taenidia integerrima) flowers in Goldenrod Valley.