Butterfly caterpillar cage for the class room

Today I collected scraps in and around my work shop and built Meg a butterfly caterpillar cage for her second grade class. It is handy having a decent table saw to make the wood you need from scraps.

The size of this is 24 x 30 (the 1/4 inch plywood bottom. The walls are 24 inches tall and the peaked roof projects it to 36 inches tall.

It fits perfectly on the science table next to the window. I gathered 22 Black Swallowtail caterpillars(1-4 days old) from the bronze fennel in the garden. Now they await the kids in the morning. She has 16 kids in the class so if all goes well each kid will be able to release a butterfly into the schools garden. I did find 3 larger cats in the schools garden.

 Here is a male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail I found in the garden today. I've been seeing around five of them every day in the garden on the Joe-pye-weed

This pair of mated dragonflies are called Halloween Pennants, very colorful. These are common this time of year, usually found out in open meadows.

Thanks to those of you have have alerted me to the fact that my website www.rlephoto.com is down. It might be under going maintenance or I forgot to pay for the hosting I will check into it soon.

Penny's Bend Nature Preserve

Today Meg and I took a late mid afternoon walk at Penny's Bend Nature Preserve. For those of you that do nor know about Penny's Bend it is this large horseshoe bend in the Eno River and it has some unique plant associations. A very pleasant place to spend some time in Durham, NC.

A male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio glaucus on Butterflyweed, Asclepias tuberosa
The link above takes you to my page about this butterfly.

A male Spicebush Swallowtail, Papilio troilus on Butterflyweed, Asclepias tuberosa
The link above takes you to my page about this butterfly.

Northern Copperhead, Agkistrodon contortrix mokeson

We found this on a gravel road on Saturday a little over a mile from our house. No he was not happy to see me, nor was Meg as I took this photo.
Usually we see these venomous snakes on the roads during the summer at night, this guy was out mid day. I have never in 12 years found one here on the property, the neighbor across the street called me about one she found in her yard about a month ago. She caught it a drove it to a wilder place to live.

This is my new carpenter's helper, he's called Snoozy the Possum! This morning he was sleeping next to my carpenter shop. I had a little project I was working on and he was 6-8 foot away the entire time sleepy away while I cut 36 boards using the circular saw, table saw which I drug past him and set up to rip my boards and the electric sander.He did move about 6 inches twice to hide better, but he had to get in his beauty rest and was not concerned about me even when the focusing light hit him when I took this day light lit photo from a foot away.

Other wildlife we have been having here is White-tailed Deer they have ate our peas and my Swiss Chard the last two nights! Meg is beside herself about her peas. We picked a quart of peas today, maybe our last.

Also for over a week we have been getting 4 Mallard ducks on the pond 3 males and one female. They are welcome to eat all the vegetation in the pond they wish!

New to our yard list a Common Sanddragon. I have lost the list but believe the list is close to 50 species of dragonflies and damselflies. We also added Prince Baskettail last month as one was seen cruising the sky over our pond!

This is a Slender Bluet, Enallagma traviatum that we found at Penny's Bend. Took me a long time to get myself to believe it is a Slender Bluet, normally the last segment(10) should not have that blue. This is the first Durham County record in twenty years, it is tiny and hard to find or no one has reported it. Last year I found over 100 of these at the pond next door and a few at our pond too. On Friday I counted 24 at the local pond.

The photo below shows some details the experts might enjoy.

A Rare Butterfly and Clouds of Azure Bluets

Today I found a few hours to walk along our road and check out the Ox-eyed Daisies, hoping for some good butterflies. I was lucky enough to find an Pepper and Salt Skipper which is one of the roadside skippers. This was likely the third one found here in 12 years. They are tiny and easily overlooked.

Pepper and Salt Skipper on Ox-eyed Daisy

My other good find a Juniper Hairstreak on Ox-eyed Daisy, in all I found three of these today, and junipers the host plant were very close by too.


American Lady on what I think is either Pearly Everlasting or Pussytoes laying eggs.

Below is an Hoary Edge skipper it can be mistaken for the much more common Silver-spotted Skipper. Hoary Edges are uncommon skippers yet around my place they are common.

Below is a male Skimming Bluet, Enallagma geminatum they showed up today on the pond I have been finding them here for about a week each year for the past 3-4 years. You have to watch carefully to tell them from the Azure Bluets. They are smaller about 1 1/4 inch and they tend to perch on waterlily pads.

OK I wandered off the road onto an adjacent tract and found a pond I didn't know was there. The pond is about 4 times bigger than mine and it had clouds of Azure Bluets over the open water! I'm sure there were at least 500 Azure Bluets if not a 1000 or more. Now I know where mine came from.

Both of these photos are of mated Azure Bluets. This type of mating is called a "wheel" as you can see the male attaches himself to the back of the female's head and she attaches to the male's abdomen to fertilize her eggs. If you see damselflies flying together or resting with the male attached to the female's head it is called a pair in tandem, they are not mated.

I also came upon a Black Racer snake intent on catching frogs. It never moved from its position about 3 foot from me when I found it. I also never seen so many Bullfrog tadpoles as I did today.

Dragons and Damsels Part 1

Currently my feed is down as I switched to feedburner, good idea not too sure about it.

I just love to find these dragonflies and damselflies in the natural habitat. I have found 42 species of them here at my little pond. Here are some samples from my pond and a small ( I do mean small) bonus!

At top right is a pair of Amber-winged Spreadwings in tandem. The female is ovapositing eggs into the plant stem. The male holds her head so she can mate with him. This photo was taken from waders in 2 foot of water in my pond with a tripod. I sweat ed and waited out this photos for over an hour. They were never even slightly disturbed.

Next we have a Common Green Darner that was emerging in my pond at about 11 pm. Too hard to shoot outside so I brought it in and shot a series of photos as it emerged, using a blue sheet for a background.

The Common Green Darner is pumping up its wings, not quite ready to fly off.

Now for your bonus! These sprites (damselflies) are so tiny I'm sure I spent years wading through them without ever noticing them. They are about 3/4 inches long and blend into the grass very well.

The first one is a female Southern Sprite perched on a reed.

The last one is a pair of Sphagnum Sprites in a "wheel" mated. Telling these sprites apart is not the easiest thing to do. Also to photograph these sprites like this one has to nearly lay down in a bog to shoot them.

Odonates a little about them!

Well it looks like we have made it though the hard freezes here in North Carolina, the greens did fine. Today it is expected to get to 64 degrees, then the possibility of rain for the next 3 days. So with not much gardening going on I came up with this post.

I've been chasing odonates for many years, odonates means dragonflies and damselflies from the order of Odonata.

Do you know how to quickly tell them apart? Come on think about this one..

Ok, I'll tell you dragonflies always perch, well at least the ones you see perching with the wings flat open like this female Yellow-sided Skimmer on the right.

Damselflies always perch with their wings closed over their backs like this Sparkling Jewelwing. Jewelwing females are easy to tell by the white stigma near the top edge of the wings.

There is one exception to damselflies having closed wings behind their backs, the spreadwing damselflies. Spreadwings hold the wings partly open like this male Southern Spreadwing.

Speadwings are my favorite damselfies as the are hard to find and always found along ponds and marsh edges unlike some of the other damselfies that travel away from water a good bit. Telling them apart is another thing altogether.