Category Archives: Pets & critters

Screech came for a short visit

By

Screech came to visit the other day.
He’s molting and looks most unsettled.
It was good to see him again.

~*~

Thankfully, we’re finally getting some rain. The storms are few and far between. I’m not a fan of storms, but as long as they’re giving us rain, I don’t mind them a bit… at the moment… In our area (so far) The land is drinking up the rain about as fast as it falls and hits the ground. We’re due for more over the next few days. When the weather allows, we sit outside and enjoy the cooler weather brought by the rains. The cooler temperatures are a refreshing bonus of the storms too.

I hope your week is a good one!

.

Wildlife Wednesday – Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth

By

I saw this beauty feeding on my basil.It’s so fast that I got only a few photos and one super short video.

Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth
taking off after feeding on my basil.


Wishing you all a beautiful Wednesday!

Related Post:
Snowberry Clear Wing Hummingbird Moth

~*~

edited 8-3-2017
I fixed the word ‘Snowberry’.
I misspelled it on the video, the photos & this post.
I apologize for my mistake & any confusion I may have caused.
 

.

Wildlife Wednesday – camouflaged caterpillar, sphinx moth & trapdoor spider

By

I was tending to my marigolds when I saw tiny petals moving around a bloom. You don’t usually see that type of activity in a marigold, so I watched it for a few minutes. I discovered that it was a caterpillar that had used marigold petals to camouflage itself. I got such a chuckle from see it.

One evening just after sunset, we were sitting on the back-porch. I saw what I thought was a hummingbird flying around and feeding on my daylilies. I commented to my husband that the hummingbird sure was up late and I’d never seen one fly after dark. He agreed.
I got my camera and tried to focus in on it and take a couple photos. Only one turned out pretty good and it wasn’t a hummingbird, it was a huge moth. Wow, if you know how big a daylily bloom is then you can kind of tell that this moth was quite large.
I looked on the internet and as best as I can tell, it’s some sort of a sphinx moth.

Last weekend, our mower’s drive belt broke. My husband used a leaf blower to clean the mower out before he started work on it to replace the belt. He called out for me to come and see the spider that had fell out of the hood. I hurried over and was surprised to see one of the biggest trapdoor spiders that I’ve ever seen. Its body was at least 3 cm long (a bit over an inch). With its legs it was even bigger and scarier.
I clicked off a photo of the trapdoor spider before my husband properly dispatched it.
I’ve decided not to post the trapdoor spider photo in this post out of respect to people who may be unsettled by seeing it. Instead, I’ve made a link to the photo. If you would like to see the scary creeper Click Here a photo should open in a separate tab or window (if I linked it right.)

It can be amusing, interesting and/or unsettling to notice some of the buglife that I don’t usually pay attention too. I’m glad my camera is usually with me so I can get photos to help me in internet searches to better identify them.

Have you seen any amusing, interesting or scary critters lately?

I hope your Wednesday is pest free and a good one.

.

Black Swallowtail Butterfly Lifecycle

By

Here’s my video of the black swallowtail butterfly emerging from it’s chrysalis. It’s pretty neat to see the butterfly emerge and watch it climb as high as it can. My video isn’t perfect, but I’m glad to have it anyway.

Here’s a gallery of the basic lifecycle of the black swallowtail butter from egg to butterfly. 
*There another stage not shown; a shedding of the skin off of the chrysalis. I wasn’t quick enough to capture that stage in a photo or on video.
These photos are from different butterflies. I tried to choose the clearest photos to share. I copied some of them from my video of the chrysalis hatching(?).

And for now, with the exception of watching new caterpillars in the wild, this ends my butterfly farming for the year.  I think it was a success.

Wishing you all a successful week.

*edited in 7-12-2017- Over the past few days, I’ve been watching some black swallowtail butterfly eggs and today I discovered they hatched. I managed to get a photo of the tiny caterpillar less than 24 hours old. I added the photo to the gallery.

.