Big Beautiful End Of The Summer Surprises!

    The butterflies are flocking to the butterfly bush, too.  Several yellow tiger swallowtail butterflies are continually visiting the bush.  Did you know the male tiger swallowtails have four black ‘tiger stripes’ on each front wing?  

 

   The females can be either yellow or almost completely black, but you can see the faint darker tiger stripes.  The yellow females have a band of blue spots along the hind wings.  The females are bigger than the males.

 

   The males have fewer and smaller blue spots than the females do.  The spots are not in a band like the females and they may even have just one blue spot.

    Remember the butterfly weed, ‘Asclepias tuberosa’, which I bought and planted last year?   It has grown a lot.  It flowered once and already has some seed pods on it.  It is flowering again.

   It is planted a few feet from the butterfly bush and hopefully a beacon to the Monarch butterflies.  The butterfly weed is a species of milkweed, and the monarchs cannot survive without it. They lay their eggs exclusively on the milkweed plants.

   The Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on the underside of the leaves.  When the larvae emerge, they eat the green leaves.  The caterpillar then becomes an emerald colored chrysalis.  This stage lasts for two weeks.  Then the butterfly begins to emerge.  Click here ► for a complete description of the monarch life cycle.

    Hopefully, I capture pictures of this amazing process, because I have spotted one on the butterfly bush!

 

    Isn’t it interesting that the male monarch butterfly has a black spot on the inside of its hind wing, but the females do not have that spot?  Who knew?  I did not learn that in school, and who figured that out anyway?

    This little female goldfinch has been enjoying the black oil sunflower seeds.  While the male has been seen on the DIY cup bird feeder, which I made last year, he is just not there as much.  That’s why there is not a great picture of him yet!

    The cardinals are a lot more wary than some of the other birds.  It took a lot of quiet waiting to capture these shots.  Isn’t she gorgeous, understated, and elegant?

    Her partner was almost always with her or a stone throw away, ever wary,  just watching.

    For a couple of years, I have tried to get a good picture of the tufted titmouse, which lives in the pine tree in our neighbor’s backyard.  He and his friends were too far away and flew too fast.  Finally, he and his partner were lured down to the cup feeder with the sunflower seeds.  Aren’t they perfect?

  It’s amazing what goes on all around us when we are too busy to notice as we join the everyday rat race.  Often, I would be gone before the sun was up and home after it had set.  The last couple of years, after retiring, I have been able to sit back and enjoy this wondrous world just outside my back door.  

     Take some time and sit quietly in your back yard.  Grab your camera!   Maybe Big Beautiful End Of The Summer Surprises await you in your garden, too.