Butterflies, Birds and Blooms

I am starting to see beautiful butterflies in the garden each day now.

Black swallowtail butterfly on pink zinnia.  It looks like there is a bee under the zinnia, too.  Besides all the pollinators, the gold finches pull these flowers apart to get at the seeds in the middle.

I can see this zinnia patch from my office window during the day and notice when the butterflies arrive.

Monarch butterfly sipping nectar.  I saw a monarch once in the beginning of August, but now it looks like they are in the garden more often.

Such beautiful details on the monarch butterfly.

I snapped this grainy picture of the monarch on my red milkweed, a host plant for the caterpillars.  I have not seen any caterpillar eggs on the milkweed yet, but I will keep watching.

Speaking of caterpillars…each year I have at least one tomato hornworm on my tomato plants.  I love the designs on the hornworm, which will turn into a clearwing moth that looks a lot like a hummingbird.  These orange cherry tomatoes are the best I have ever had.  Week after week they are amazingly sweet.

I think there are some hummingbirds nesting in the mulberries near our house.  I see them flying around quite a bit, but this is the only picture I have gotten of one of them as it sipped on the Russian sage this morning.

This is the second year I have seen this kind of bird in the yard.  I am guessing that it is a female Baltimore oriole in our crabapple tree, but if anyone has a better idea please let me know.

A group of chickadees were in the crabapple this morning.  All I could get was this silhouette.

One morning I noticed the neighbor cat sitting very quietly looking at the area where both the bunny and the chipmunk often hide.  We left the gate open one night and have not seen the bunny since, thankfully.

The chipmunk is very active and has a hole in the ground right at this spot, so it can disappear and come out on the other side of the fence.

The nasturtiums are starting to thrive now.

Marigolds with basil flowering in the background.

We have a lot of peppers in the yard now.  I just picked this bell pepper today after it got a little more orange/yellow.

Dan was eager to remove these two Chicago Lustre viburnum bushes that were infested with viburnum leaf beetles.  Digging the stumps and roots out is a big job for another day.  I am not sure what to replace them with.

What Elephants Know, by Eric Dinerstein, is a really fun children’s book that I read recently.  It is fun for adults, too!  It takes you into the jungles of Nepal….

Have a great week and get out and enjoy the rest of summer!

August Morning at Lake Katherine

Both Saturday and Sunday I took morning walks at Lake Katherine.  Here is a little of what I saw.

Green heron

These pickerel rush blue pond flowers were planted this spring and are blooming in the shallows of the lake.  I had some trouble getting a picture of them, but here is a small one with the green heron.

The green heron stretched out ready to catch a fish.

I actually noticed the green heron today when I was zooming in to try to find out what this bird was.  I think it is the eastern kingbird.

Great blue heron.

It was one of those gorgeous mornings with incredible reflections.  Can you see the line of ducks in the water?  The beaver lodge is on the far left.

 A close up of the ducks with the beaver lodge behind.

Here comes a beaver swimming with a tree branch to the beaver lodge nearby.

I am going to try inserting a little video of the beaver.  Our camera battery ran out on Saturday morning.

Marsh mallow

There are all kinds of wild flowers blooming now.

Green darner dragonfly

All the water is gone from the ephemeral pond now and it is full of grasses and other plants. This would have been one place where dragonflies would have hatched, I think.

Elderberries are ripening making good bird food.

I spent a while trying to get a picture of this oriole in the tree top.

Male goldfinch eating thistle seeds.

Male goldfinch singing a morning song.

On the paved bike trail there are people on bikes and runners.  The lake trail has a lot of dog walkers, fast walkers, and slow walkers with cameras, too.