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We Have Poisonous Caterpillars!

Posted by Gary on June 11, 2012 in Insects

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It has been about a week since the monarch butterfly spent breakfast with me and deposited several eggs on milkweed plants in our backyard.  Anne and I decide to search the plants to see if the eggs hatched and to find the caterpillars.

It takes a few minutes, but we find a small caterpillar hanging out in a cluster of milkweed flowers. Another caterpillar is methodically munching on a milkweed leaf and a third is climbing up one of the stems. Anne finds a total of seven caterpillars of various sizes, some obviously hatched recently, others hatched days earlier.

It is interesting that these creatures are eating a poisonous plant; well it’s poisonous if you have a heart. It contains cardiac glycosides that, if ingested, cause heart arrhythmias. When the caterpillars eat the milkweed leaves, they become toxic to the birds and wildlife that consume them. This chemical gives them a bitter taste too, but if eaten, the bird or animal will become sick to their stomach thus avoiding future caterpillars they see. The poison remains in the insects system even after it changes into a butterfly via the chrysalis. I wonder if the raccoon that ate the chrysalis last week became sick. Did it learn a lesson?

For days, Anne goes out and checks her “babies” and tries to find every caterpillar. Some mornings, she does not find them all and worries that something happened only to account for all seven by the afternoon. We look forward to the next stage of the monarch butterfly that is almost magical!

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Unsolved Mystery – Case Closed

Posted by Gary on June 8, 2012 in Wildlife

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Aha! You are caught! I should have known it was you! You thief! Why do you just hang there like that? Do you really think you are entitled to that nectar? Hey, I’m talking to you! Turn around and look at me. That’s not for you!

The creature drops from the feeder and walks over to the upside down bird bath bowl. While looking at Anne and me with indifference, it paws a monarch butterfly chrysalis that once hung from the bottom of the bird bath. “Hey, leave that alone,” Anne shouts. The animal rolls it around a bit and proceeds to eat it. “I hope that makes you sick,” Anne tells it.

Even after we open the back door, motivated by hunger or maybe a sweet tooth, the offender continues to eye the hummingbird feeder. It turns its head and looks over its shoulder weighing its options. Reluctantly, it saunters off into the darkness.

So now, I bring the hummingbird feeder at night and hang it each morning. I still haven’t seen hummingbirds come to it, but it will always remind me of the night I caught the masked bandit.

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Unsolved Mysteries – The Lucky Break

Posted by Gary on June 7, 2012 in Birds of the Field and Forest

Evidence in the backyard. Note the bird bath top is on the ground.

Anne shakes me from a sound sleep. It’s 4:00 in the morning. “Gary, I hate to wake you up, but there is something hanging from the hummingbird feeder,” she tells me. I get up, rub my eyes and throw on a robe. Could this be the criminal stealing the nectar? Will I finally figure out why my hummingbird feeder is empty each morning?

Not wanting to scare it away, I stand in the living room and look through the Florida room windows into the backyard. The moon in the southwest sky casts a blue/gray glow in our yard. I see the top of our bird bath is knocked over and upside down on the ground. I look over to the hummingbird feeder and see a dark shadowy figure hanging from the feeder. In the moonlit darkness it looks like a writhing sack of potatoes.

I walk slowly over to the window and fix my eyes on at the feeder and still can’t make out what it is. It looks like some small strange animal. I decide to walk slowly to the back door light switch and hope that I can identify it before it runs away.  I feel for the light switch in the dark room and flick it on. Oh, my gosh! I don’t believe it!

Note: In another day, I will reveal the culprit. I have photographic evidence.

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Unsolved Mysteries at Arbor Lakes

Posted by Gary on June 6, 2012 in Birds of the Field and Forest

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Sitting in my parent’s Florida room during a visit 10 years ago, I enjoy seeing all the birds that visit their yard. Their Citrus County home is in the middle of cattle ranches and the open farmland attracts turkey vultures, bluebirds and cattle egrets. My mom says, “You know what I’ve yet to see here? A ruby-throated hummingbird.” No sooner she said that, a ruby throated hummingbird flies into her flower garden and sips nectar from one of the red flowers blooming there. “There’s one,” I exclaimed with a laugh.

When I moved to Florida years later, I looked forward to attracting hummingbirds to my yard. To increase my chances I hung a hummingbird feeder outside my back window where I could delight in seeing these delicate little birds. Sure enough it wasn’t long before it attracted a hummingbird. “Great,” I thought, “I should be able to get nice photos of this.” But as the weeks went by, I didn’t see any hummingbirds around my feeder.

Yet, every morning, the nectar in the feeder was totally gone. So they must be coming to it. Are they coming early in the morning before I get up? I filled the feeder each night and by morning the sugary water was gone. One day, Anne reports that the feeder was knocked down and pulled apart. Then it dawns on me. Maybe there is something else at work here. Could it be a bobcat licking the feeder dry? Oh, maybe a coyote? A stray dog? Maybe it’s just a squirrel with a sweet tooth! I was so perplexed that I stayed up late and got up in the middle of the night, flicked on the backdoor light hoping to catch the culprit red-handed. I did this nearly every night.

But after weeks of diligence in trying to catch the criminal, I am resigned that I may never know what is robbing the hummingbirds of the nectar. The thief has not returned to the scene of the crime so I may never know who this beast is. I guess this will be an unsolved mystery for now.

Update: I wrote this blog weeks ago expecting that there would be an interesting ending, but put it on hold when nothing was happening. Well, I recently discovered why the feeder was empty of nectar in the morning and you will be as surprised as I was. I will post Part 2 to this story soon.

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Breakfast with my Gossamer Winged Guest

Posted by Gary on June 3, 2012 in Insects

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As the sun rises over Lake Tsala Apopka its first light shines into my bedroom. A mockingbird calls from a distant rooftop and a cardinal joins in, then a mourning dove and a Carolina wren. I awaken, grab a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal and sit in the Florida room eating my breakfast as the birds grab their breakfast from our backyard feeder.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of orange and turn my attention to it. It’s a monarch butterfly. It flaps its wings a few times rising in the air then floats down like a feather and lands on a milkweed plant. I watch intently as it holds onto a leaf with its six legs and bends its abdomen around and under to deposit a single egg on the underside of the leaf. It rises with a couple flutters and again floats down onto another leaf and repeats the process laying another egg. This insect of tissue wings ascends again, then lands on a cluster of milkweed flowers. It walks a bit on the cluster before it unrolls a straw-like appendage from its mouth and pushes it down into the center of a single flower sipping its sweet nectar. After ten minutes of laying eggs and having breakfast with me and the birds, it flies away.

Anne and I check the leaves to see if we can find the eggs it laid. It takes some time, but we find a single egg on the bottom of a leaf. It looks like a barrel cactus without its thorns, tiny, delicate, yet stuck well on the leaf. Anne is elated because she planted the milkweeds to increase their opportunities to reproduce. We look forward to seeing the beautiful caterpillars emerge from the eggs to continue the life cycle of this precious butterfly.

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