Pollinator Powwow!  

Saturday, April 12 at 1 pm.   4212 W. Streetsboro Rd, Richfield, OH

Join Robert Najjar, Master Beekeeper, Geoff Rapp, Fantastic Foragers and Wildflower Expert, and me for a hands-on presentation about our favorite pollinators.  Geoff has a scavenger hunt planned through the Eastwood Preserve meadow and woods.  We'll hunt for wildflowers!  Honey and wildflower products will be on sale.  FREE and open to the public.

Weather-permitting, we will meet outside of Eastwood House.  If it rains (or snows!), the rain date is Saturday, April 26 at 1 pm.

 Join us for the Third Annual Pollinator Powwow!  Special presentation by master beekeeper, Robert Najjar, President of the Summit County Beekeepers Association.  I will be talking about butterflies and moths and my fellow naturalist, Geoff Rapp, will talk about native wildflowers and their benefits to all of us.

Free and open to the public!

Saturday, April 12 at 1 pm

Eastwood Preserve in Richfield, Ohio

4712 W. Streetsboro Rd.

 

Every year we try to bring the joy of butterfly rearing to our communities in the form of a butterfly camp. All ages attend from age 1 to 91, and there is so much to learn about these endangered creatures. This year at the Magical Butterfly Camp we had 32 people excited to share the magic of the metamorphosis of the monarch butterfly.

One of our youngest campers meeting a newly emerged female monarch.

Here I am explaining the importance of milkweed to the monarch caterpillar.  Milkweed is the only host for monarch caterpillar and is being lost to over development and herbicides.

We released 370 monarchs this summer!  Thank you to all who helped raise these beautiful creatures.

This is one of the butterfly parasites--the tachnid fly.  It lays its egg inside a caterpillar and the larva slowly eats the poor caterpillar from the inside out.
Note red eyes and prickly back.

My last 7 crysalises are awaiting good weather before the butterflies eclose (emerge).  Meanwhile, this wooly bear caterpillar found a home in my garage after munching a final meal!

Busy summer! I photographed all of these in the garden:

 Hairstreak

 Red Admiral

 mourning cloak

 painted lady

male tiger swallowtail

female black swallowtail

 female tiger swallowtail

 clouded sulphur

 monarch!

 Great Spangled Fritillary

 Monarch

Spring 2018

After a long, bitter winter, I was surprised to see that my milkweed has sprouted quickly with the warmer May weather.  Excited to welcome back the monarchs!

Released my final butterfly on Saturday, Oct 21.  He was beautiful and one I found as a 4th instar on my milkweed.  He only spent one day eating and then formed his crysalis.  So glad he emerged healthy and strong!  He picked a lovely sunny day to eclose and joined several other monarchs migrating through the garden!

I tagged 16 butterflies this summer.  I hope they make it to Mexico!

A gorgeous October day, warmer than usual and filled with butterflies!  Here's one I have only seen in a book:

a buckeye!!

My favorite!

More photos

Today it was 76 degrees and sunny--a truly gorgeous day!  We were visited by at least two dozen monarchs on their way to Texas.  They enjoyed the zinnias and butterfly bush plants in the butterfly garden as well as the other flowers my fellow gardeners had in their gardens.  What a sight!

The black swallowtails were so much fun to raise!  However--please note never to buy "organic" parsley from the store to feed the caterpillars.  It appears that organic farms are permitted to use a pesticide that is deadly to all insects (wonder what it does to us?) and the parsley I purchased ended up killing most of my caterpillars.
This one, however, was on one of my homegrown plants:

Great news!  I raised and released 145 monarchs this summer as well as 15 painted ladies and 5 black swallowtails.  Unfortunately, I saw no swallowtails after I released them, but the painted ladies stayed and I've seen them all over the zinnias!

Often your caterpillar turns into a pupa so quickly you miss the whole thing!  Someone with more patience than me caught the "wiggle" in this video.  Note that the caterpillar wiggles and squirms right out of his skin.  The last thing to pop off  is his head!


http://i.imgur.com/3OEY4Xn.mp4

Busy summer!  We've released 50 monarchs so far and currently I have 6 growing.  I also found 6 newly laid eggs on some of the new growth milkweed.  If you trim your milkweed plants throughout the summer, the plants will send out new shoots.  These are highly favored by the female monarchs as the plants will provide better nutrition for the growing caterpillars than the older plants.  In fact, some believe that the milkweed plants that have been growing all summer provide insufficient nutrition for the "super" generation which flies  on to Texas.

A Monarch Way Station

Introduction

    Every year a new generation of monarch butterflies begin its journey from birthplaces in the northeastern United States and Canada. But where are they heading? Every single monarch has a natural GPS which will lead many of them exactly to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico. Quite a long journey for such a small insect--nearly 2000 miles.  Some of the east coast monarchs make their way to Florida.  To help them travel such great distances, these butterflies have learned to fly very high and float on the air currents.  This may explain why they end up at several different wintering areas.

Scientists are still attempting to find out how monarchs pass along information about their birthplace to subsequent generations as the monarch that leaves Ohio in October is the great-great grandparent of the one that returns to the same field the following June.

What is a Way Station?

    The definition of a way station is a stopping point on a journey. These way stations serve as refueling stops for the monarchs. These stations may have a lack of predators, or a good source of food and shelter.

How can I Make my Home a Way Station?

    Monarch butterflies return to the place they were born to produce more offspring. This is an evolutionary process which allows the monarchs a better chance to reproduce. But they can only do this with a very special and poisonous plant. Milkweed.  Don't destroy the wild milkweed growing along the roadsides and in fields nearby.  Keep pesticides and fertilizers away from nectar-producing flowers and milkweed.  If you want to buy milkweed to plant in your yard, there are many websites to choose from.  My favorite is www.butterflybushes.com.  Rose Franklin, the owner, produces healthy plants that flourish in Ohio's weather.  You also need to plant nectar-producing flowers for the adult monarchs. Rose's site lists many of the best ones for butterflies and you can order from her or find them at your local nursery.  Food, shelter and water are basics for making your home a Monarch Way Station.

NOTE:  Rose also ships monarch eggs, caterpillars and even pupas.  Her site also provides butterfly cages if you want to raise monarchs.

    Milkweed is what monarchs need to lay their eggs. Because milkweed is poisonous, predators of the monarch typically cannot eat the plant. Also, due to how much milkweed a monarch eats throughout its life, the monarch is poisonous to most animals. Monarch butterflies will lay their eggs on the underside of these plants, so that when their caterpillar is born, it will have the best chance of staying dry and out of sight of many predators.

This is a newly emerged caterpillar.  It is about the size of a comma on a page -- the black dot is its head.  The first thing it does is eat its eggshell.  Over the next two weeks, it will increase its size to 2000 times larger.  Before it forms its crystalis, it will be about 2 inches long.  To compare, it would be like a human child growing to the size of a school bus in two weeks!

Ohio Butterflies Seen So Far

Here are some Ohio butterflies I have seen in the garden.  Sadly, I have only observed one of each of these types--no "flutters" of butterflies.  Very few of these gorgeous flying flowers seen this year, but at least some to make the summer special:

  

A Great Spangled Frittilary on Butterfly Weed

The ever abundant cabbage butterfly on butterfly bush

A silver spotted skipper on clover

a tiny Delaware skipper (only about 1/2" wide) on astilbe

newly emerged black swallowtail on marigolds

Tiger Swallowtail

Not a pretty butterfly, but according to my Butterflies of Ohio book, a rare sighting because these butteflies are disappearing.  Apparently sightings in the field are unreliable because it closely resembles another butterfly.  So it could be a Columbine Duskywing or a Wild Indigo Duskywing.  Neither of which I have ever seen before and both are rare.  This one was in my front yard.  My yard is the right habitat (wooded ravines and moist woodlands) so it has probably been here all along.  Easy to miss!  So glad to document it!

The orange sulphur butterfly