Tag Archive | Photography
The Falcon That Eats Carrion
Though the crested caracara hunts for reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects and small mammals, its primary diet is dead animals. You can often find them foraging for food on the ground and can be seen eating carrion with vultures. These raptors live in open savannah areas in northern South America, Central America, Mexico, Cuba and in […]
Delightful Backyard Butterflies
I planted fire-bush shrubs in our backyard to attract butterflies and hummingbirds with great success. The flowers are a good source of nectar for these creatures. cloudless sulphur butterflies and zebra long-wings are two of the butterflies that frequent these bushes. We see Ruby-throated Hummingbirds too in the early morning and at dusk flying from […]
Cultivating a Future Naturalist
“Hi! Hi!”, I hear my 16-month-old granddaughter say excitedly in our Florida room. Wondering who she was talking to, I look into the room to see her face to face with a young eastern gray squirrel that climbed on the window ledge to peer into our house. The squirrel seemed as enchanted to see my […]
How Milkweed Helped the Tiger Swallowtail!
Monarch butterflies continue to find the milkweed plants in our garden to lay eggs. Soon, there are only green sticks left to our milkweed plants dotted with hungry caterpillars. Anne counts 15 monarch caterpillars of various sizes. We find a small one crawling on our hot concrete driveway looking for more milkweed plants to eat. […]
The Amazing Bug!
As Anne and I enjoy watching butterflies sipping nectar from our milkweed flowers and monarch caterpillars devouring milkweed leaves, we see small orange and black colored insects on the plant’s seed pods. These insects are large milkweed bugs that eat milkweed seeds. This bug has a long proboscis that pierces the seed pods and injects […]
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