Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
Category Archives: Monarch After the dreary, rainy day we had yesterday, it was a welcome sight to have nothing but sunshine and blue skies today. The beautiful weather also brought out all the Butterflies. It also brought out the “territorialness” in all the male Butterflies. Probably the most aggressive was this male Monarch pictured below. He would rest…  We have quite a few Monarch Caterpillars right now. We counted at least 20 of them today feeding on the Milkweed. Fortunately, our Milkweed is looking pretty healthy and has lots of leaves so we should be able to feed them without any problems. The picture below was one of the larger Caterpillars we have… Just a couple pieces of interesting news that I don’t think I have posted before. Did you know Butterflies live on the Space Station? Well they don’t yet, but they will (hopefully). On the Shuttle that launched on Monday, November 16, 2009, they took two types of Butterfly Caterpillars to be dropped off at the…  I continue to be amazed at how much more detail my Canon 7D can pick up compared to my older Canon 40D. I have two pictures to share that illustrate this. In the first, this is a newborn Monarch on the Gardenia Bush warming up in the sun. I took this picture with my Macro…  Another “critter” that took advantage of the brief bout of sunshine we had was this male Monarch. He was obviously quite hungry as he only would land on this Butterfly Bush, and wasn’t the least bit concerned about patrolling for female Monarchs. I don’t know about you, but to me he sure has a lot…  Well, not really. I don’t even watch that show (Desperate Housewives). The title has to do with this male Monarch that was establishing his territory today while looking for females and at the same time chasing off any other Butterfly that would happen to fly by. Both of these pictures are with the Monarch resting…  I took a weekend trip to Sheldon Reservoir since it was fairly close to the house. That place is pretty rustic compared to the parks I have been to previously. I went there mainly to try my hand at shooting some birds, but ended up taking a few Butterfly photos as well. This first shot…  Active day today for Butterflies and Honeybees. They tend to fight on the Cigar Bush. We also had two Eastern Black Swallowtails hatch and one Polydamas. The Skippers were lively today as well. Last but not least, there were a couple of young Monarchs flying around. My best shot I’ve ever taken of the Fiery…  Active day in the backyard as the sun finally decided to make an appearance. We went most of the Summer with very little rain, then the past week it’s rained almost every day. The poor Butterflies were probably just “sheltering in place.” Since the sun was out, and things began to warm up, it also…  Got up early this morning since the sun was finally out. Found a few Monarch Caterpillars and a Queen Caterpillar. I haven’t seen the Queen’s flying around, but have seen the Monarchs. Larger size of a different Monarch Caterpillar. And here’s the Queen Caterpillar  First up, a Long Tailed Skipper. They’re prettier than I thought. My first reaction was that the features and the hair weren’t as sharp as I was expecting. With minor sharpening I think it looks okay My reaction to the above shot is it again wasn’t quite as crisp as I was expecting, but I…  Since Leecy went to the Susan G. Komen walk this morning, I decided I would take a field trip back to the Houston Arboretum. As I mentioned before, I really like that place. Lots of Fritillaries were flying around, a few Monarchs, and several Skippers. There was also a beautiful Hawk hunting mice, a family… I found around five Monarch Caterpillars feeding on Milkweed. There were also two females flying around getting nectar from various plants. Here’s a female Monarch sipping nectar on a Purple Coneflower. Same Monarch, different pose. I put this in my response to Valerie, but I thought I would post it as well. We just had a strange occurrence happen that we’ve never experienced before, at least not at this high of ratio. Leecy and I took in about 7 Monarch Caterpillars about a week ago. Only 2 of them made… Look what we gathered up today (and yesterday as well)! Our first batch of Monarch Caterpillars suddenly appeared. It’s still a little early for the big migration (I think that should be around October), but we apparently have some Monarchs who are laying eggs. Today I was reading some posts in one of the Butterfly… |
|