Plant goldenrods, asters, and milkweeds to provide Monarchs (and as you can see, many other pollinators) all the sustenance they will need during their breeding season and southward migration.
Wildflowers in order of appearance:
Seaside Goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens)
Smooth Aster (Symphyotrichum laeve)
New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)
Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
What are Homegrown National Parks? HNP is an exciting movement that raises awareness and urgently inspires EVERYONE to address the biodiversity crisis. How can we as individuals and organizations do this? By adding native plants and removing invasives where we live, work, learn, pray, and play.
We all know that wildlife populations are crashing the world over. The statistics are staggering, with approximately one-third of our breeding birds lost since 1970, or about 3 billion birds, and 40 percent of our insects (bird food!) in the past 40 years. HNP is showing people how we can address this crisis, backyard by backyard.
Sunday evening, Doug Tallamy, the esteemed entomologist, author, and co-founder of Homegrown National Parks, presented “The Power of Plants.” The event was hosted by 400 Trees and the Annisquam Village Church, and was followed the next morning by an informal idea-sharing discussion at our newly renovated gorgeous library. The presentation was rich with imagery and case studies of what can be accomplished in our own backyards, from teeny urban lots to suburban homes to substantial acreage. The group discussion was especially thoughtful and interesting, providing a wonderful opportunity to meet people in our community with similar interests, missions, and goals, Many, many thanks to Peter Lawrence and Sara Remsen for organizing the Tallamy talk and discussion.
Visit the Homegrown National Parks website. It is overflowing with super helpful information to get you started on your native plants journey. You can also listen to several of his excellent talks right there on the website. I have been teaching people how to grow pollinator gardens and documenting the wildlife supported by native trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and ground covers for over twenty years now. Not a day goes by where I don’t observe and learn some new, vital and fascinating information about the beautiful ecosystems created in a native plant’s habitat. When you plant native they will come!
1. Plant Native
2. Remove Invasives
3. Get on the Map
Images courtesy Doug Tallamy “The Power of Plants”
Identify the most productive plants. How to find native plants keystone species –
Native Plant Finder from the National Wildlife Federation: go to the following website and type in your zip code for an extensive list of highly valuable native trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and ground covers specifically beneficial to wildlife in your region. https://nativeplantfinder.nwf.org/
I was listening to Doug’s talk via Zoom in my office, which is also Charlotte’s art room. Charlotte is illustrating a book she is working on, all about the history of Gloucester’s monsters. It’s very imaginative and even includes mini side bars of illustrations of the eggs unique to each monster, along with the monster’s baby pictures (Nessie is well-represented). She was also enjoying glancing over at all the fascinating caterpillar images in Doug’s slideshow, when she overheard the expression ‘keystone species.’ She commented, “just like oysters are a keystone species for the ocean.” We had been to the Seacoast Science Center a week earlier where she had learned about the importance of keystone species in an ecosystem. I just thought how wonderful for her to connect the two and how much like mental sponges are these beautiful curious-minded children of the up and coming generation. I surely never learned at eight years old what a keystone species is, but how easy it was for her to understand the concept. If for no other reason, our beautiful children, and our children’s children, are why we simply can not leave to them a barren, diversity-less world.
Not phased in the least, this Super Monarch tolerates the Red-spotted Purple visiting his garden patch.
The great North to Central to South American magnificent southward migration of wildlife is fully underway. These beautiful creatures do not see borders, religion, nor ethnicities and bind us together in myriad meaningful ways. As birds are taking to the skies by the hundreds of thousands, we are seeing the beginnings of the Monarch migration as well. During these first weeks of September local meadows and gardens are graced with newly emerged Monarchs. At this time of year, these recently eclosed butterflies are nicknamed the “Super” Monarchs.
You can see the above Monarch has just emerged from his chrysalis as his wing cells are still a bit crumpled.
A tell tale sign of a male Super Monarch, also called a Methuselah Monarch, is that they are not at all interested in finding a mate. A male Monarch that is not migrating stops only briefly to nectar. For the most part he ceaselessly patrols the milkweed looking for a female and chases away any other winged pollinator. He has evolved with the main objective of reproducing; whereas a Methuselah Monarch takes its time sucking up nectar and is very tolerant of other butterflies it encounters.
Methuselah Monarchs emerge in a state of sexual immaturity, called diapause. They evolved to drink lots and lots of nectar to build their fat reserves for the long journey south and to sustain them through the winter. This super generation of Monarchs are oftentimes larger but will lose some of their body weight by the time they reach the trans-Mexican volcanic forests
The Monarchs rest through the winter, then will break diapause next spring when they begin their journey north.
To help all of our winged friends during the spectacular southward migration please remember Lights Out for Birds
To learn more about the magnificent Monarch migration see our documentary Beauty on the Wing: Life Story of the Monarch Butterfly streaming on PBS Passport. To arrange a screening and QandA for your organization, please contact me at kimsmithdesigns@hotmail.com or leave a comment in the comment section.
I hope you enjoy these last glowing days of summer,
xxKim
Female (left) and male Monarch Butterflies, Stone Harbor Point NJ
Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality
Paul Wegzyn and his family have created a most magical family friendly farm event. The theme this season is LOVE and beautiful quotes are placed throughout the fields.
Every season Paul develops new and wonderful experiences for people and this year is no exception. If you do, as do we, have a bunny- and goat-loving youngster in your family, they will be utterly delighted with the very pet-able, softest bunnies and sweetest goats around!
He has created a lovely butterfly garden with Mexican Sunflowers, Zinnias, and Cleome and you can PYO all the flowers on the farm, including Paul’s beautiful dahlias.
A new crop of lavender is almost ready to pick as is a freshly opening field of orange sunflowers with dark centers, which I can not wait to see.
Felix’s Family Farm is open everyday from now until about the third week in September, or as long as the flowers last.
20 Lowes Lane, Ipswich, MA
978-229-1071
The following is a list of even more activities Felix’s Family Farm has to offer. To learn more, please go here.
Look how lovey our patch of Summer Phlox has grown. I wish I could say it was my genius garden design skills but alas, this is all nature’s doing!
Where this border is growing I originally had only planted the mildew resistant and pure white Phlox paniculata ‘David.’ Some distance away, we planted the striking P. paniculata ‘Bright Eyes,’ a light pink with deep magenta centers and adjacent to ‘Bright Eyes,’ a pretty lavender called ‘Franz Shubert. ‘
Several years have gone by and we now have a patch of volunteers blooming in beautiful shades of pink, lavender, and magenta. I think this may have happened because the plants have cross-pollinated and are allowed to reseed. We don’t deadhead and don’t mulch and that encourages little seedlings to take hold and spread far and wide in our garden.
Phlox paniculata is native to the eastern US and grows in a range of conditions. The location in our garden where it is thriving is partially shaded by the Magnolia grandiflora. This beautiful, beautiful wildflower is also wonderfully fragrant, with a heady floral scent especially potent in the early morning and late in the day. I have on occasion seen Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and Eastern Tiger Swallowtails drinking nectar from the blossoms but mostly the blooms are especially attractive to Bumblebees.
Pollen-dusted Bumblebee
Did I mention that P. paniculata blooms for many weeks??
Plant this native beauty. I promise, you will be delighted for many years to come.
We’ve been graced with Monarchs and fat healthy caterpillars this summer. Please write and let me know if you are seeing Monarchs (or not) in your garden <3 
In the garden experimenting with my new camera and I came across Ladybugs devouring aphids on our Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) buds.
What a love and we so appreciate your appetite for all things aphids <3
Good morning sweet Spring Azure! Look for these tiny one-inch wide wingspan butterflies drinking nectar from the flowers of crabapple, Common Milkweed, blackberry, dandelion, violet and many more spring bloomers.
The female deposits her eggs on a variety of woody shrubs and trees including dogwood (native Cornus florida, not the non-native Korean Kousa), viburnum, blueberry, sumac, and cherry. In our garden, the females mostly oviposit eggs around the pale pink buds of our native Meadowsweet (Spirea alba var. latifolia). 
In recent years, March 14th has been designated National Learn About Butterflies Day. Butterfly populations, as are many species of insects, plummeting around the globe. Climate change, loss of habitat, and the use of pesticides are at the top of the list as to why we are losing our insects.
What can we do as individuals, and collectively with like-minded friends? I have been writing about the plight of butterflies for nearly 30 years and at the risk of sounding repetitive, the following are easy to follow guidelines:
Refrain from Using ALL Pesticides and Herbicides.
Do Not Spring Into Spring Cleaning!
For the sake of all pollinators, and many songbirds, do not do a spring garden clean up too early. When is a good time? Wait until your grass is growing tall and needs to be mowed and ideally, apple and pear trees in your area have finished blooming. You can also clean-up some spots and leave others unkempt for an even later season clean-up.
Grow Native and Not Invasively
Plant native species of trees, shrubs, vines, wildflowers, and ground covers. Only plant non-native species (such as tulips and zinnias for example) that do not spread outside the area in which you wish them to grow.
American Copper, Bee, and native aster
Provide Continuous Blooms from Early Spring Through November 1st
Create a landscape that provides nourishment for pollinators and songbirds, from the earliest days of spring though the last hard frost. Include colorful nectar plants and equally as important, grow native larval host plants for butterfly caterpillars.
Although these lovely pink Korean Daisies are not native, they are not invasive and bloom until the first hard frost. They are especially welcome to late migrating scragglers such as the Monarch pictured here.
Plant in Clumps and Drifts Whenever Possible.
Butterflies and bees love to drink nectar at a buffet where they can flit easily from one floret to the next. Allow perennials to spread into drifts and clumps. Panicle-shaped flower heads (think goldenrods) and aster-type flowers, with their ray flowers conveniently arrayed around a center disk of florets, provide a convenient landing pad onto which butterflies can land while they are sipping nectar.
Monarchs and Seaside Goldenrod
Dear PiPl Friends,
I hope you are doing well. We are keeping our family and friends in our hearts as they struggle to return to a normal way of life after the tragic LA firestorms. I hope the winds die down soon so recovery can begin in earnest. Our daughter shares that she and her boyfriend are bringing supplies to firehouse donation centers and she is keeping her hummingbird feeders well-filled as there are more birds than ever in her garden.
Thursday night I am giving a screening and Q and A of our Monarch film, Beauty on the Wing: Life Story of the Monarch Butterfly for the Carlisle Conservation Foundation at the Gleason Public Library. We have super good news to share regarding the Monarch film – the contract has been renewed with American Public Television, which means our documentary will be airing on PBS for another three years! We will have two nature documentaries simultaneously airing on public television 🙂 Our film about the magnificent migrating Monarchs provides a wealth of information not only about the life story of the butterfly, but also suggestions on what to plant to support the Monarchs throughout their time spent in their northern breeding range.
We had a beautiful snowfall this past weekend. Snow storms and snowfalls have become so few and far between over the past few years in our area that I hopped in my car before sunrise and headed north to film what I could, hopefully before the snow stopped. There was hardly a soul about. A wonderful variety of songbirds was foraging in the falling snow and also a very hungry Barred Owl was zooming from tree to tree surrounding an adjacent field. I pulled myself away before she caught her prey because I didn’t want to have any part in preventing her from capturing her breakfast. Fortuitously, the very next day, a friend shared a post on how to tell the difference between a male and female Barred Owl. You can read the post here. I concluded the BO flying to and from her tree perches was a female. It was magical watching her in the falling snow. Link to video of her flying –https://vimeo.com/1047197766 or you can watch it on Facebook or Instagram.
The deadline is fast approaching for underwriting opportunities for our documentary, The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay. We need to have all the names of underwriters in by January 20th to fulfill our contract with American Public Television. If you would like to join our underwriting pod with a contribution to our film and have your name or your organization’s name included in our underwriting credit pod please email me asap. An example of an underwriting pod – This film was brought to you by the Apple Tree Foundation, The Shorebird Conservation Fund, Lark and Phoenix Bird, …, and viewers like you (these are just sample names). Please note that every time the film airs and streams on PBS over the next three years, possibly six years, the name of your organization will be acknowledged. Of course, we gratefully accept all contributions to our documentary at any time, but if you would like to be recognized in this way, please let me know. 
Common Grackle Eating Plover eggs
I can’t believe that in only two short months Plovers and shorebirds will be returning to our beaches. Please contact me if you would like to join our Plover Ambassador team. Research from scientists in the Michigan Great Lakes region made Plover news this past week. Common Grackles were documented foraging on Piping Plover eggs. This is very noteworthy but not too surprising to our Cape Ann Plover Ambassadors as we have seen our Plovers defending their nests from Grackles. There is a very large roost of Common Grackles on Nautilus Road, opposite Good Harbor Beach. The Plovers distract the Grackles with their broken wing display and tag-team attack behavior. We wondered, were the Grackles posing a real threat or did the Plovers behave this way because Common Crows and Grackles look somewhat similar? Crows notoriously eat Plover eggs at every stage of development, from newly laid to near hatch date. We now know definitively the answer as to why our Good Harbor Beach Plovers are on high alert around Grackles!
Stay safe and warm and cozy,
xxKim
In honor of World Migratory Bird Day, yesterday I visited the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences. The Center is located in Manomet, a seaside village of Plymouth. Special free programming included a presentation by the Center’s bird banding experts, children’s activities, and a bird-a-thon. I was especially interested in learning how the Center bands songbirds. Banding takes place annually from April through November. Some days the Center bands as few as 10, on other days, upwards of 200. Manomet has records on migrating and resident birds dating back over 50 years and it was fascinating to learn about their banding protocols and population trends.
Juvenile Carolina Wren – The Carolina Wren population is growing in Massachusetts
while the Blue Jay population is in steep decline.
The theme of Wold Migratory Bird Days 2024 is insects and the importance of insects as a critical source of protein for migrating birds.
Insects sightings at Manomet on included Autumn Meadowhawk damselflies, American Lady Butterfly, skipper of unknown species, a variety of bees, and several Monarchs. Unlike Cape Ann, the Seaside Goldenrod is still blooming on Cape Cod. 
Monarch Butterfly and Seaside Goldenrod
The public is welcome from dawn to dusk to walk the trails, enjoy the view from the bluff and bird watch.
Address:
125 Manomet Point Road
Plymouth, MA 02360
(508) 224-6521
At the Trevor Lloyd-Evans Banding Lab, we use science and education to create opportunities that connect people to nature. Migratory and resident birds have been banded at our Manomet’s Plymouth, Mass. location since 1966. Manomet’s Founding Director Kathleen (Betty) Anderson banded the first recorded bird – a Black-capped Chickadee.
For more than 50 years, Manomet has maintained a spring and fall migration bird banding program. Bird banding is an effective method of research that helps answer important questions on issues from conservation to climate change. Manomet’s banding lab, one of the first bird observatories established in North America, focuses on areas including:
Manomet staff has recorded over 1,000 plant, animal, and fungus species on site, showing the value of our coastal forest and shoreline as a rich laboratory for research.
Migratory bird banding operations represent an underutilized source of data about bird migration. Long-term data sets in ecology, like ours, may lead to discoveries often missed in shorter-term studies, and are critical for establishing baselines and tracking changes in the natural world. Because birds are widely surveyed by professional and amateur observers alike, and their natural histories are often well-understood, wild bird populations can be useful sentinels of environmental change and ecosystem condition.
Check here for weekly summaries of current and past banding seasons.
The banding team operates 50 mist nets on the property surrounding Manomet headquarters in southeastern Massachusetts along Cape Cod Bay. Nets are kept open during daylight hours, Monday through Friday, in the spring and fall. Banders walk the net lanes, safely removing trapped birds and returning them to the lab where their species, age, sex, weight, and fat content are measured and recorded. We have banded over 250,000 birds and handled over 400,000 since banding began on the property in 1966. We band around 2,500 new birds each year.
As Manomet’s longest-standing program, the banding lab has helped train hundreds of prospective researchers, educators, and conservation advocates since its inception. We educate about 1,000 visiting school children, volunteers, and college students every year. We strive to engage people of all ages with nature and to measurably increase people’s understanding of environmental change.
In 1993, the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center created International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD). This educational campaign focused on the Western Hemisphere celebrated its 25th year in 2018. Since 2007, IMBD has been coordinated by Environment for the Americas (EFTA), a non-profit organization that strives to connect people to bird conservation.
In 2018, EFTA joined the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) and the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) to create a single, global bird conservation education campaign, World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD). Continuing our tradition with IMBD, WMBD celebrates and brings attention to one of the most important and spectacular events in the Americas – bird migration.
This new alliance furthers migratory bird conservation around the globe by creating a worldwide campaign organized around the planet’s major migratory bird corridors, the African-Eurasian flyway, the East Asian-Australasian flyway, and the Americas flyway. By promoting the same event name, annual conservation theme, and messaging, we combine our voices into a global chorus to boost the urgent need for migratory bird conservation.
EFTA will continue to focus its efforts on the flyways in the Americas to highlight the need to conserve migratory birds and protect their habitats, and will continue to coordinate events, programs, and activities in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean at protected areas, refuges, parks, museums, schools, zoos, and more. As many as 700 events and programs are hosted annually to introduce the public to migratory birds and ways to conserve them.
Please don’t tidy up your garden just yet. The Monarch migration is really lagging compared to other years. The weather has not been cooperating and they have been waiting for the winds to shift from the northwest. Finally, it happened and yesterday and we saw our first signs of the migration with several small passels. The issues are that because the migration is later than normal and because of the drought, many wildflowers have passed peak. In other words, the Monarch migration is out of sync with the blooming time of the most nectar-rich native wildflowers.
Monarchs and Seaside Goldenrods back in September
How can gardeners help? If we must tidy up, please at least wait until the end of the October. Leave your sunflowers, asters, goldenrods, dahlias, verbenas, cosmos, Mexican sunflowers, zinnias, butterfly bushes, and Montauk Daisies in place. Even if they appear a bit unruly, in many instances, the butterflies are still able to extract some nectar.
Monarchs migrating in October need our garden stalwarts, such as Zinnias
Tracking the migration overnight roost population numbers from Journey North, you can see that by October 10th, 2024, so far, the Atlantic Flyway population is way, way down.
The northwest winds are predicted for the next several days. Please write and share any Monarch sightings. Thank you!
Monarch and Mexican Sunflowers – safe travels Monarca!
An utter joy this morning encountering the exquisite Bronze Copper butterfly, not often seen in Massachusetts (especially in Essex County). The butterfly is listed as endangered in New Jersey and a species of concern in Connecticut.
The Bronze Copper is larger than it’s much more commonly seen close relative, the American Copper, but still relatively small at only 1 and 1/4 to 1 and 7/8 in inches.
The male was drinking heartily from the Seaside Goldenrod. It’s caterpillar food plants are members of of the buckwheat family (Polygonaceae), including curly dock (Rumex crispus).
Compare to the American Copper
Our beautiful Mom Pipevine Swallowtail left several clutches of eggs and both hatched yesterday. They are so teeny tiny, but I think there are about 25 caterpillars in all.
She laid several additional clutches over a period of several days and these batches are way up in the treetops. Good thing our Pipevine plant is so vigorous, possibly about 15 feet high, with still plenty of growth left in it for the season.
The eggs were oviposited on August 13, emerging on the 20th – a one week gestation period.
The stunning Pipevine Swallowtail that you see in the video is depositing a clutch of several dozen eggs. Her gift represents a success for me of sorts. Years ago, we had a Pipevine Swallowtail in our garden, a male, and he was investigating the heart shaped leaves of our Moonvine. I made a promise to the Pipevine Butterflies that the next time they made it this far north, I would have a Pipevine growing in the garden on which a traveling female could deposit her eggs. I can’t resist but to add – not a “pipe dream after all!”
You see, Dutchman’s Pipevine is one of the few caterpillar food plants of the Pipevine Swallowtail that grows well in northern climates. Like the Moonvine, the leaves of the Dutchman’s Pipevine are large and heart-shaped.
A hundred years or so ago, Pipevine Swallowtails regularly occurred in New England because people planted Dutchman’s Pipevine to embower their porches. In one season, the vine can grow two stories high and equally as wide, providing lush green cooling shade on a hot summer afternoon. When you look at old photographs of porches in New England, most often it’s Pipevine climbing up the porch pillars and along the roof. With the advent of air conditioning, folks no longer needed to plant Dutchman’s Pipevine to cool their homes The vine, and the butterflies, were forgotten.
Julia Lane, later Julia Wheeler, posed for Alice M. Curtis on August 12th, 1915, in Gloucester. Photo courtesy Fred Bodin.
Our visiting Mama Pipevine cautiously investigated the entire plant from top to bottom, fluttering in and out of the large leaves before deciding on this tiny tender leaf to deposit her treasure trove. We had a female come to our garden about ten years after the vine was planted. She deposited a clutch of eggs however, a tiny spider ate them all, every single one. I am not taking any chances this time and placed the stem with the eggs in a terrarium, covering the terrarium with several layers of cheesecloth, and a wire screen, in hopes of keeping the spiders out.
If you would like to attract the exquisite Pipevine Swallowtail to your garden, plant Dutchman’s Pipevine. It’s an enthusiastic grower, but no need to worry, you can cut it all down to the bare ground after the first frost and it will come back just as beautifully and plush the following spring.
Nearly five years ago, in late September 2007, I photographed a male Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly (Battus philenor) nectaring in my garden. I found mesmerizing its dark beauty, with black wings punctuated by brilliant orange spots and shimmering iridescence. The wings flashed electric blue in the fading late day sunlight and I became completely captivated!
Although the Pipevine Swallowtail is not rare in its southern range, this exotic looking butterfly is an unusual occurrence in the northeast, and even more rarely found on the eastern outer reaches of Cape Ann. Mine was a stray, carried in on a southerly breeze. I imagined that if a male can drift into our garden, so can a female. And if a visiting female found in my garden her caterpillar food plant, she would deposit her eggs. The following spring we planted the Dutchman’s Pipevine (Aristolochia macrophylla) Read more here
These tiny pretty skippers in our garden were in an amorous way. After much wing shimmering and nudging, the pair flew off together where they were not seen again until later in the day.
I believe they are Zabulon Skippers. I just love saying that name, Zabulon. Doesn’t it sound enchanting? When the wings of the Zabulon Skipper are fully spread, they only measure a mere one to one and a half inches!
Skippers are butterflies in the family Hesperidae and are named for their super quick darting flight habit; when these two were spotted seeming in repose, I turned my zooming camera’s eye to see what would happen next. While vibrating their wings in turns, the male moved in closer and then repeatedly placed his head between her hind wings.
Skippers differ in a number of ways from other families of butterflies. Several ways to tell the difference when out in the field are that skippers have antennae with clubs at the tip that hook backwards, similar to a crochet hook. All other butterflies have knob-like tips to their antennae. Skippers also have stockier, more robust bodies
According to the Massachusetts Butterfly website, Zabulon Skipper caterpillar food plants “include Tridens flava (purpletop) and Eragrostis spp. (lovegrass). They deposit their eggs on a wide variety of grasses in the wild, and its full range of host plants has not been fully investigated, especially in Massachusetts.” The adults nectar from a number of flowering plants; the day they were courting in our garden, the male was drinking nectar from the bell-shaped blue blossoms of our Clematis ‘Betty Corning’ and they were zipping around the Zinnia patch.
Zabulon Skipper – male
Some years are better than others for butterflies and this is definitely a banner year for butterflies on Cape Ann. Please write and let me know what you are seeing in your garden.
Daily we have a bunch of half a dozen or so male Monarchs staking out their territory. They not only chase each other but also try to shoo away other species of butterflies.
Last week I posted a video and photos of the beautiful Hummingbird Clearwing Moth. Several comments led me to believe that people are confusing Clearwing Moth caterpillars with the caterpillars that may be eating your tomato plants.
Tomato Hornworm caterpillars, the ones that eat tomatoes, look like this –
Image courtesy wiki commons media
The adults look like this –
Manduca quinquemaculata MHNT CUT 2010 0 116 Schuylkill Haven, Schuylkill Co. Penna male dorsal Image courtesy wikicommons mediaHummingbird Clearwing Moth (Hemaris thysbe) caterpillars look like this –
Image courtesy wiki commons media
The adults like this –
This morning when I arrived home from filming I was fortunate to get a brief glimpse of the Bumblebee Moth, also known as the Snowberry Clearwing Moth (Hemaris diffinis).
Bumblebee Moths are named as such because their colors resemble a bumblebee –
Images courtesy wiki commons media
Little flashes of blue iridescence flitting through the garden quickly caught my attention.
A number of black butterflies sport blue iridescence in their wing scales, including the Pipevine Swallowtail, female Eastern Black Swallowtail, Red-spotted Purple, and the Spicebush Swallowtail. Which one was gracing our garden today?
The newly emerged beauty was a Red-spotted Purple, which I had not seen for several years! The much tastier (to birds) Red-spotted Purple Butterflies are thought to have evolved to mimic the foul tasting and toxic Pipevine Swallowtail. Red-spotted Purple caterpillars eat non-toxic leaves of Serviceberry, oaks, Black Cherry, aspens, birches, Eastern Cottonwood, and hawthorns, which would make both the caterpillars and adults appetizing to birds. By mimicking the Pipevine Swallowtail, which eats toxic foliage of plants in the genus Aristolochia, the mimics–Red-spotted Purple, Spicebush Swallowtail, and female Eastern Black Swallowtail–find some protection, to a certain degree.
Under wing, or ventral wing pattern
Upper wing, or dorsal, wing pattern
The beautiful blue iridescence in butterfly wings is created from the microscopic ridges, cross-ribs, and other structural layers of the individual scales, which play with light waves to reflect brilliant blues and speckles.
We had just watered the garden and I think the Red-spotted Purple was drinking up droplets of water. Perhaps there was salt or some necessary nutrients in the droplets when mixed with the foliage.
Saturday mid-morning I returned home from filming shorebirds at dawn to find an extravaganza of winged wonders in our garden. The weather was gloriously warm and sunny, filming the birds had been a great success, and seeing all these creatures flying around our front dooryard garden was the best kind of morning greeting!
Mama and Papa Carolina Wrens were zipping to and from the nest feeding their hungry hatchlings every kind of insect imaginable, a nearly whole Canadian Tiger Swallowtail was pausing to drink nectar from the butterfly bushes, our resident pair of fledgling Ruby-throated Hummingbirds were whirring about the Rose of Sharon, half a dozen male Monarchs were patrolling the milkweed patches, and two visitors I hadn’t seen in our garden for some time–a newly emerged Red-spotted Purple Butterfly and a Hummingbird Clearing Moth (Hemaris thysbe)
Hummingbird Moths have been described as resembling a tiny flying lobster or an enormous furry bee and are often confused with Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Not only do Hummingbird Clearwing Moths share similar coloring to that of RTHumminbirds, perhaps the confusion stems from a characteristic behavior of the clearwing moths, which is a technique for drinking nectar called ‘swing hovering.’ Only certain bats, hummingbirds, and the clearwing moths have the ability to swing from side to side while hovering over a flower to drink nectar.
The Hummingbird Clearwing Moth only visited for a few brief moments, but i was glad to have camera in hand when stepping out of the car. To attract these beauties to your garden plant native honeysuckle, viburnums, and Snowberry bushes for their caterpillar’s food plants and native Phlox ‘david,’ Monarda didyma, and butterfly bushes for the adults to nectar from.
Have you noticed how lush our gardens are this year? Perhaps it’s because we never had a sudden deep, deep freeze this past winter but whatever the reason, the blossoms and growth of flowering and fruiting trees, hydrangeas, roses, lilacs, milkweed, and butterfly bushes (to name a few) haven’t looked this grand in a number of years. And our wildflower meadows are also simply spectacular with blossoms. For the past month while looking after the Plovers, we have been delighted with the rich honey-hay smell wafting down to the beach from the Common Milkweed blooming widely across the dunes.
We’ve had a bunch of Mama Monarchs flitting through our milkweed patches and ovipositing a treasure trove of golden drops over the past several weeks. She gently curls her abdomen, ovipositing one egg at a time, while simultaneously, each egg attaches with a quick drying sticky glue. I was showing a friend how to look for the eggs and she was amazed at how teeny they are. Only about the size of a pinhead, we most often find them on the tender new growth emerging in the center of the plant or on the leaves more towards the top of the plant. Wild Monarchs deposit one egg at a time. You can see in the pairs of photos the egg she deposited after carefully inspecting each leaf.
Monarchs held in captivity in breeding cages and tents are observed dumping quantities of eggs in large clusters (not one at a time) on milkweed plants as they are not free to travel around to investigate foliage. This is one reason why Monarch diseases are on the rise. Captive reared Lepidoptera also diminish genetic diversity, weakening a species. If you would like to raise Monarchs, it is highly recommended by organizations such as Monarch Watch and The Xerces Society to raise in small batches, only ten or so at a time, from eggs collected in your garden, not purchased over the internet and from butterfly farms.
These newly emerged Black Swallowtail Butterflies in our garden are both females. You can easily see the difference between Black Swallowtail males and females.
The females have a great deal more of the sparkly blue iridescent wing scales, while the males have many more yellow spots.
Female Black Swallowtails
Male Black Swallowtail
Charlotte discovered the caterpillars on fennel plants at Cedar Rock Gardens. Black Swallowtail females deposit their eggs on members of the Carrot Family including dill, fennel, parsley, Queen Anne’s Lace, and parsnips.
This past week, Monarchs have been spotted at my friend Patti’s garden in East Gloucester, at Wolf Hill Garden Center, and in our garden. I was overjoyed to see she was a female, depositing eggs on the tender new foliage of Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).
Please write and let us know when you see your first Monarch. Thank you!
Wolf Hill is carrying a fabulous array of native plants, including both A. syriaca and Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa).
Monarch egg – a miniature golden dome, the size of a pinhead
WHEN: Thurs., March 14, 6:30-8:30 pm WHERE: HC MEDIA, Studio 101 2 Merrimack St., Haverhill WHAT: Experience the magical migration that happens in our midst, unfolding in backyards, farms, meadows, fields, and along the shoreline, wherever milkweed and wildflowers grow. Stay after the film for a Q&A with Director Kim Smith. Photo: Kim Smith
