God's Glorious Creatures

Last year about this time, my father screened in my back porch. We finally got a door for it, but it turned out to be much cheaper that we thought. So, my dad took the door with him to work on it. Now the patio is open and all kinds of creatures find their way in there, especially insects. In the past few days we have found some interesting ones. I took pictures so we could share. This year we will be studying insects for the last part of Zoo I, so this is very timely.

This one is definately a Sphinx moth or Hawk moth. They are so large and probably one of my favorite moths. He was already dead when we found him. They are unique because they pupate underground. It is related to the tomato/tobacco hornworm. (those big green worms that eat your tomato plants.)

This one is another favorite. Many confuse this one with a bumble bee. The size is about the same, but it is definately a moth; a Clear-winged sphinx moth. You can tell it is a moth when it is flying by looking at its clubbed antenna. When first born, the moth has black scales all over its wings, but as it flies most of them fall off leaving the wings clear.

Here's another view of him.

This one is a moth also, but I am not sure what kind. Look at his body, especially his tail. He was on the screen and looked like a leaf instead of an insect.

Here he is from another angle.

This is a black swallowtail. She was fiesty and I had a hard time getting her out of the patio. I usually try to scoop them into a box and then let them go. She wasn't going in the box, so I ended up gently using my hands.

We have also had a host of wasps and bees and the Arkansas state bird, the mosquito, camping out back there. As I was eating lunch on Sunday after church I looked out to see a hummingbird caught back there. I knew it would happen; I just didn't know when. I so wanted to be able to hold it, but it didn't seem very sure of me. Hummers are smart. It spotted the door and left on its own. We have lots of hummers at our house. We usually read our science or history on the porch so we can watch them feed and fight. One we have named Curious because she will fly up to the screen and look at us as we are reading. She is a cutie. She is tough to. She defends "her" feeder very well. They also feed from the other flowers in the garden underneath the feeder. We like to put rotting bananas out there to attract small insects for them to eat. Hummers love insects.

I'll keep you posted on what else we find that is interesting. I think we may have a door up some time next week.

Rosemary Stripey Hatched

Oh wow!!! She hatched, finally!!! Who? Rosemary Stripey our Black Swallowtail Caterpiller chrysalis. You can read about her here: http://ghomeschool.blogspot.com/2008/09/gods-glorious-creation.html and here: http://ghomeschool.blogspot.com/2008/09/as-of-tuesday-we-have-new-caterpillar.html

She came to us last fall on September 9th. A lady in our homeschool group found a bunch of the caterpillars eating her parsley and decided to give them away. It didn't take Rosemary Stripey (RS) to turn into a chrysalis, about 2 days. That was way back in September. That is over 10 months ago!! We carried her to vacation in Orlando for a week and since she has been sitting atop our fridge. I had given up on her. 10 months? Something must be wrong. I decided to put the box outside on the porch as a last resort. Maybe the house is too cool for her. We keep it on 78 degrees most of the time. The next day, yesterday, Bobbi came in and was telling me about a box on the back porch. It took me a while to understand which box. "Mom, it has a butterfly in it. It is on its back, and I think it's dead." All my hopes sank. What have I done? We rushed out to see. There she was on her back on the bottom of the box, but she was wiggling. Yeah. She's alive! I opened the box and helped her up onto a stick that Tyler brought me.

This is how she came out of her chrysalis.Tyler is the stick man at our house. LOL. She must have just hatched because she was still small and shrivled. She was still draining and drying. Oh, we were excited. She stayed there all afternoon and night. Our porch is screened in, so we felt lucky that she could fly around when she was ready, but we would still be able to see her when she left us. She is a beautiful butterfly. One of God's awesome creations. New life right before our eyes. I checked on her, frequently, all morning. She was flapping her wings a bit, but still draining early on. Then, after class, we were going to read our history on the porch with her. That's when I noticed she was gone. She had flown down to the floor by the door and was fluttering on the ground. I thought she might be having problems, but she was ready to fly. I helped her out and off she went. You can tell in the video I was excited.

God's Glorious Creation

Last night, Rosemary Stripey (the caterpillar) became an official chrysalis!! She is much more beautiful than I thought she would be. She is green, which I think is a much more rare color. Usually they are brown. It is amazing to look at the pictures from yesterday's post and know that she didn't move, but turned into this. It is even more amazing to know that she will eventually turn into a beautiful black Swallowtail butterfly. Only God can do something like that. She didn't have "ears" as a caterpillar, but not she has these ear-like points on top of her.

You can look closely at her and still see her old skin is the chrysalis in places. You can still see the strings that are holding her to the box. Truly amazing

Can you see her old skin in this picture? Look at the bottom of her.

Rosemary Stripey Caterpillar

As of Tuesday, we have a new caterpillar pet. It is the caterpillar of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly. A friend at our homeschool group found several on her parsley and decided to share them. We were thrilled to get one. Bobbi and Tyler have named her Rosemary Stripey (we couldn't decide, so we combined names). We only had her for a day before she started to wander. Caterpillars do that before they begin to pupate. They also empty out their digestive tract. (Yuck!) She wandered around and around the little box she is in before deciding on a spot to stick to. I tried to get her to attach to a stick, but she wasn't interested.

They attach themselves with what looks like spider's web. There is a bunch on her bottom side and then there is a small string coming from her to the wall of the box. If you look close, you can see it. It is white.

There is also one on the other side, but it didn't photograph well. How she did this, I don't know. If you look close in the first picture you can see that none of her "legs" are on the wall, just her abdomen(tail) and her head. We are waiting for her to molt one last time. When she does this it will be her pupa or chrysalis. I don't think it is very pretty, but we will wait and see. It really doesn't matter because when she comes out she will be a beautiful Black Swallowtail Butterfly. I must plant lots of parsley next year. I planted carrots this year, but they didn't do well. I want to plant a butterfly/moth garden that will support not only the adult, but also the larva. How cool would that be. I'll keep you posted.

Squish the Squash Bugs

A few weeks ago I noticed some tiny red eggs on my pumpkin plant leaves. Hmm, wonder what these are? Being the inquisitive person I am, I decided to just leave them and see. BAD idea. There were lots more eggs than I could see and I could see lots. So a couple of day ago I was checking on my "finally" pumpkin when I saw these little white fellows. What on earth are those? They look like something out of the "Mrs. Spider" book. I had never seen such insects, ever. There were tons of them in all sizes. Well, I left them and did finally research what they are. They are squash bug babies. They have piercing mouthparts, so they suck the juice out of the plant. As if that isn't bad enough, they also inject some sort of toxin into the plant that gums up the "water works". The leaves and stems die due to lack of water. Well, I have some very yellow leaves and some dead leaves. What to do?! Back to the internet. I couldn't live without the internet. (I could but...) I found a post that said to just mix up some soapy water and spray them with it. It will cause them to suffocate. That sounded better than some chemical pesticide. I want to be as natural as possible. So I tried it. Well, it worked like a dream. Now the ants are having a picnic on the dead carcasses of the squash bugs. The first picture is the babies hatching The second is of the buggers on my pumpkin. I have waited all summer for a pumpkin. The third picture is of the adult. I stepped on three of these and it made me so happy. No more eggs from them. Ha