Butterflies, Snakes, Birds, and Other Misc Items

I know I’ve been posting lots of bird pictures, but the Butterfly pictures are coming as well.  We have lots of little Monarch Caterpillars right now from the single female that we saw a couple of weeks ago.  We also have lots of little Caterpillars from the Eastern Black Swallowtail.  I simply ran out of time today to get pictures of these Caterpillars using my macro lens.  I’m going to do my best to get those pictures up to share this week.

In other news, I have seen 3 Garter snakes this weekend.  One was about a foot long, and bit my hand the whole time I held it, another was about 2 feet long, and the third was again about 1 foot long.  I didn’t get pictures of those either, but I will, just wait!  I need Leecy’s help for that as I can’t photograph and hold a snake at the same time.

Lots of mating behaviors are starting to occur with the birds.  Males are competing with one another, and females are being chased all over the place.  There are about 10 Purple Martins in our Martin house, and about 20 overall.  The other 10 seem to hang around the house that’s a few doors down from mine where they have 4 Purple Martin houses (I’m jealous!).  I need to do a nest check in that Martin house, but they normally spend a few weeks getting to know one other before building their nest (at least from what I’ve observed in the past).

On a side note, especially for those that are new to Butterfly Gardening.  I’m noticing a lot of those red Paper Wasps.  They are notorious Caterpillar killers.  I’m contemplating covering the Caterpillars I can find to make sure they don’t get eaten.