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8/25/09 400 Monarchs Well, we hit 400 monarchs eggs and larvae collected on Sunday. We could have collected more, but it is taking about 2 hours to clean and log everybody. My house is starting to get neglected. So, we are not actively looking for more monarchs. We did have some sort of disease wipe out about 25 shedding and pupating larva. I have been bleaching containers like crazy. Not sure what happened there. On the flipside, we have been releasing a bunch of butterflies and are nearly out of tags. The second set that I ordered should be here soon.
When Shane and I were collecting milkweed on Sunday we came across the large yellow garden spider to the right. I was running after a butterfly with the net so we could tag it, when I saw this spider in my path. I have never seen such a large spider in the wild! She is as big as the locust she is wrapping. We also saw a pair of mating monarchs. I was getting ready to get a photo when a 3 monarch joined in and the weight of the trio brought them down into the weeds. There was a lot of flapping and the photo isn’t really good, but you can see three butterflies. Hm. . . My husband thought it could be fodder a Gary Larson cartoon.
In other news, our hummingbird has made some appearances, now that the Rose of Sharon hedge is almost done blooming. Monday school starts and Shane finally got his book report finished, which is due the first day. I am looking forward to having time to myself to work on art and go biking, which of course has also been influenced by our large monarch collection.
8/16/09 Chatter Twitter and Facebook (you can follow our monarch story on those as well) are up and running, so it’s back to this website . . . I need to program the new photos for sale and maybe adding drop down menus to the navigation bar. Since we have so many monarchs (258 at the moment) it takes a while each day to clean them and to go get more milkweed. Earlier today I picked 1 1/2 lbs., so that should last us for a few days. Of course, in gathering the milkweed, we also brought home 23 more monarchs that we hadn’t planned on. Anyhow, it takes a good chunk of my day and it has cut down on time for artwork (I’m dieing to paint some monarchs live), programming and biking. Although I have not done much biking this summer, we are making wonderful progress with Shane. His third try today, without training wheels or being attached to one of our bikes, was awesome. We think he will be ready for a family ride the next time out.
Caterpillar Cannibalism Yesterday morning when I went to clean the caterpillars, one of the containers was missing 4 fat 2nd instars. There was no way they could have escaped. Then I saw the 4th instar attack one of the 2nd instars. I immediately grabbed the 4th instar and isolated him. Usually I keep the caterpillars separated by size, date of collection and location of collection, but had left this one in with 10 small guys. The little 2nd instar is doing fine, but the incident caused me to go separate a few others and to check the Monarch Watch forum for this subject. Yes, indeed, it does happen. To prevent it, keep same size caterpillars together with plenty of room and milkweed.
8/13/09 Ok, I’ve been busy setting up Twitter and Facebook for this website. And cleaning monarchs. There are now 204 in the house! Bringing our collection count to 289. We just wanted to reach 100 for the season! And we just got our tags, but the 50 we ordered won’t go very far. . . Oh, I did find a use for caterpillar frass (poop): compost it! The paper towels are biodegradable and so is the poop, which we have copious amounts of lately. Of course, late night cleanings are still going in the garbage. I rarely turn my compost, so it takes about 2 years for it to become soil.
I’ve been using my Nikon to video tape small HD bits (you can only do 5 minutes at a time and it doesn’t constantly refocus) of the monarch metamorphosis. Once I remember how to string them together, I’ll post it on this website and on Facebook. Joel just got his replacement video camera, for the one that bit the dust. It tapes in 1080i and he plans to burn the family movies to Blu Ray. Anyhow, after he shows me what to do, I’d like to try making some better movies of the monarchs. Maybe we can make a movie of our monarch journey. A great movie you can buy from Nova or Amazon or rent from Netflix is Nova’s The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies, which details the monarch migration from Canada to Mexico. Beautifully done and very informative!
8/10/09 We’ve been teaching Shane to ride without the training wheels on his bike at a local park. He's had 2 sessions and is doing very well. We look forward to biking with him and not having to attach his bike to one of ours.
I’ve been busy snapping lots of monarch photos and evaluating them. Some of them are on Imagekind and eBay. This week I hope to add them to site and retire some of the old ones. On Tuesday we found almost 40 eggs in the yard. After putting them in containers and on the spreadsheet, I decided to take some photos. While I was shooting the one shown below Shane, I spotted and egg in the upper right corner on top of the leaf. A monarch had laid more eggs! So, I collected some more. I had just finished adding the 2nd round to our collection when my husband said that he saw 2 more monarchs in the rose garden . . . We found a total of 50 eggs and 1 1st instar! So, the goal of luring monarchs to lay eggs in our yard has been a success.
8/2/09 Well, I’m pretty tired right now. Technically it is Sunday, but I’ve been up since 7 am Saturday, so in my mind it’s still Saturday. I did 5 hours of OT "this" morning, which isn’t easy when you work 2nd shift. It’ll help pay for my tooth, which will get a temporary crown on Monday. I had no idea it was cracked. Doesn’t hurt at all! The dental tech noticed it during a routine exam.
You can now find my business on Facebook and Twitter under "evansonart." However, the accounts have not been fully set-up. You can also find Monarch Watch on Facebook and Twitter.
Monarchs, monarchs and more monarchs. We finally had a break in the weather on Thursday. Shane and I went to the park for a walk. We nearly ran over 3 or 4 monarchs resting on the gravel driveway at the park. Shane chased one that insisted on resting on the gravel. The close up shot shows her licking the ground (puddling without the puddle). There must be some mineral that the monarchs like. Perhaps they like the limestone dust. We brought home 3 eggs and 2 tiny larvae, only to find a female laying eggs on our milkweed at home! So far, I've found 14 eggs that she laid. This afternoon we released 1 male and 3 females and are expecting 12 more butterflies in the next 48 hours.
And there she was . . . an update on Homer I got to watch and photograph Homer as SHE eclosed. That’s her below the butterfly on the gravel. Because of the bad storms we’ve been having, I kept her overnight in the large pink mesh enclosure. When I called my husband as lunch break, he said, "What butterfly? There's no butterfly in the cage!" Oh dear, I hadn’t put enough pins around the screen lid and she managed to squeeze through a gap and was somewhere in the house. Shane and Joel looked for her, but no luck. When I got home, I looked for about a 1/2 hour. I could only image that she had become a cat snack! But was hoping that she was just quietly roosting somewhere. The next morning when I went to clean the monarchs, I heard some flapping between the containers and there she was! Safe and sound and eager to be released.
7/31/09 Between frequent severe thunder storms, one of which set the neighbor's house on fire, and some personal issues like a cracked tooth that needs a cap, I have not had the time to give a proper update to this page. I'll try to post something this weekend!
7/26/09 The Tour, Parsley Worms and #100 Well, the Tour de France has come to a close. Joel and I agree that it was definitely one of the best Tours we've watched. The past few years have been sullied by all of the drug scandles. This year we were very impressed by Lance and several of the teams who worked very hard to deliver their riders to victory.
When my parents were visiting for Shane’s birthday, my mom was talking about their vegetable garden, which they have every year. As always, my mom raises lots of parsley. I know it's classified as an herb, but in respect to my mother, it should be considered a vegatable. We ate lots of it as children. And she defends it vigilently against the dreaded parsley worms. This year, however, as she was complaining about the worms, something clicked in my mind and I ran a web search. Yep, sure enough, parsley worms actually are the larvae of black swallowtails. Well, maybe next year mom will plant some extra parsley so she can share it with the swallowtails. I might even try to grow some.
As much as I wanted to take my camera for another walk at Valley Forge, the stomach flu is still with me. So, I settled for a short family walk at Charlestown Park. While no photo opts presented themselves, we did come home with a monarch egg. Once we got home, I realized we needed more milkweed and did a short run to Pickering and Merlin. I returned home with 12 more eggs! After logging them on our spreadsheet, Shane and I discovered that we had reached 99 monarchs for the season! Shane suggested we check the yard and maybe we would find #100. So, I went to the rose garden and sure enough, I spotted the fresh chewing of a 1st instar on a tropical milkweed plant! We have reached monarch #100! Will we stop there? Certainly not!
7/25/09 Camera Chatter When I was in college, I bought myself a Nikon FG (35mm SLR film camera), which had TTL metering. Somewhere along the way I also bought a Nikon Coolpix point & shoot, which was also a film camera. When it died it was replaced with a digital version. About 10 years ago it became too hard on my eyes to focus using the viewfinder. So, I stopped using the FG and stuck with the point & shoot, which died and was replaced with the Nikon 4300 point & shoot that we still have. Except for the photo of the caterpillar on 7/10/09, the photos on this page prior to today’s blog (ads excluded), were taken with my Nikon 4300. It’s usually laying around and handy, but it’s not fast to turn on nor does it have a fast shutter response. 4 years ago I got a Sony F828 because I needed something better to shoot my artwork with. It's a deluxe point & shoot with the feel of my FG, but it can't quite give me the photos I want. And so, after we looked at finances, I splurged and got the Nikon D90, with the 18-105mm VR and 55-200mm VR lenes. Eventually I want the 105mm macro, but I can make due until we have the money (our video camera just bit the dust today and the house needs a new roof). Anyhow, the photos to the left have been taken with the D90. The files on these photos are huge (4288x2848, 300dpi) and would suck up too much webspace, so I've made them into a photo plate.
I’ve only had the camera a few days and have barely begun to figure out all the bells and whistles, of which it has many. Of course, the first thing I wanted to figure out was how to shoot photos of the monarchs. Using a 10+ close-up filter, I’ve shot all sorts of monarch photos. The chrysalis was shot with the 10+ filter. The filter’s too strong for pupating and eclosion shots. I've been using the zoom for that. The photo of the chrysalis is crisp enough to make at least a 23"x35" poster, as are the other shots. I did use a tripod and studio lighting. I also used the wireless cable release and found it annoying and unpredictable. I’ve ordered a wired version to replace it. The bee shot was taken in my gardens and I used the flash that is part of the camera (I haven’t ordered a separate flash -- yet).
Feeling the urge to go for a walk, I went to Valley Forge. I only had an hour of usable light. The deer are ubiquitous. When I’m mountain biking there, I can get within 10 feet of them. Here I was about 50 feet away. Since the light was fading, I bumped up the ISO to 1000 on aperature priority. I tried the landscape and auto settings, but the aperature priority gave me the best shots. The bee and chrysalis shots were also on aperature priority. However, the shot of Titan yawning was shot on auto with the flash. Incidentally, I came home from my walk with 2 monarch eggs and 2 1st instars in addition to deer photos.
7/22/09 Time for Bed It’s 2 in the morning and I just finished the changes to the monarch pages and wanted to get them loaded before going to bed. I've been busy working on them in addition to watching the Tour. Today's stage promises to be eventful! Also, Shane turned 8 on Sunday and we had a party for him. Although we have vacation this week, we have a handful of various tasks planned. And I've managed to get a case of the stomach flu.
7/15/09 Homer goes for a Ride Shane likes to play with the 5th instars as you have seen. Here Homer gets a train ride. I have to remind him to wash his hands before handling caterpillars from other containers, lest any disease be spread. Since we got 5.4 cm of rain over the weekend, I’ve been busy weeding. I still have 3 beds to go. Normally our yard is teaming with swallowtails and painted ladies, but this week I've only seen 1 cabbage butterfly and 1 tiger swallowtail, who was more interested in getting moisture and minerals from the ground (known as puddling) than pollenating my flowers.
You may have noticed that I'm revising the monarch pages. I'm adding more info and photos. After playing with my Sony F828 over the weekend I figured out a way to get closer egg/1st instar shots and sat for an hour waiting for an egg to hatch. Eventually I'd like to get a Nikon D90 and have been in contact with Nikon to see what they offer for macro attachments. If money were no object, I'd get a Leica digital camera. I learned to shoot on my Grandpa's Leica M4 (which my father inherited and eventually sold) and some of the lenses were incredible. But it was a very heavy camera by today's standards and completely manual.
7/10/09 Cheaper by the Dozen . . . Yesterday our 12 eggs hatched that were collected in our yard. They hatched an hour after the day’s Tour stage ended, so I snapped some photos and one of the babies is shown to the right. This guy is 1/8th of an inch long! Yes, I’ve been rivetted to watching the Tour every day and today’s mountain stage did not dissappoint! After it was over, Shane and I went to Pickering to get some milkweed for our caterpillars and brought home 25 eggs! I think this small patch is prolific due to the stream nearby.
7/8/09 Nature Gone Wrong The past 7 caterpillars failed to make it to the chrysalis stage. Either they turned to mush while pupating, got stuck shedding, stopped eating or did not from a proper chrysalis. Since these are signs of disease, I’m making sure Shane and I wash our hands between caterpillars when we clean the containers. Also, I'm soaking the containers overnight in 20% bleach. Yesterday caterpillar 19 attempted to pupate and turned into what you see in the pictures on the left. SciFi writers need only to look to the insect world for inspiration! After recovering from the shock and taking some photos, I realized this chrysalis would not form a butterfly and destroyed it. The good news is that caterpillar 17 turned into a lovely chrysalis moments ago.
7/5/09 Monarch in the Yard I was lamenting the fact that we haven’t seen many butterflies in the yard. This morning I noticed that the 2 huge blooming butterfly bushes at church only had one sulphur butterfly visiting them. Then, as we were watching the Tour de France recap from this morning, we noticed a female monarch visiting our purple coneflowers. The magic of those flowers! So, in between commercials, Shane and I went outside and checked our milkweed plants for eggs and found 12! I did try to catch the female for a catch & release butt check, but was unsuccessful. My attempts were half-hearted, since I also wanted her to lay as many eggs as she wanted. She hit all of the milkweed patches except those by the mail box and the propogation tray on the front porch. We’ll have to keep a close watch on our milkweed in case we missed any eggs or the female comes back. At this point, we don’t have enough mature milkweed to support a burgeoning caterpillar population. We’ll collect all of the eggs and caterpillars and "import" the milkweed for food.
About the Tour . . . Yesterday Joel and I were glued to the opening time trial. Since we ride road and mountain, we became fans of the Tour. Lance was the one that hooked us. I don’t remember which year we started watching. Some of it had to do with the fact that our cable station would give us OLN (which is now Versus) free during July. Now that we have FIOS, it's one of the regular channels. Anyhow, we are glad to see Lance back in the saddle. Some of our other favorites include Cavendish, Hushovd, McEwen (we’ll miss his sprints this year), Hincapie, Vande Velde, Leipheimer, Klöden, Evans, Boonen, and Zabriskie. I'm looking forward to the team time trial on Tuesday. One of the few perks of being on 2nd shift is that I can watch the live coverage of the race, but I'm not allowed to tell Joel what happened.
7/3/09 Big Guys Shane likes to play with the 5 instar monarchs or Big Guys as he calls them. We should soon have 4 chrysalises. We haven’t seen many butterflies of any kind in the yard lately. Possibly due to all of the rain. Our purple coneflowers are blooming and that should bring them in. Meanwhile, we continue to collect monarchs at Valley Forge and other local areas.
So far, our holiday has been spent relaxing and looking for monarchs. We should wash the cars, but have become addicted to Fallout 3, which is much like Oblivion in game play, but it’s not as beautiful and I miss the horses.
6/26/09 Turtles and Butterflies I finally got back to weeding the gardens and removing the poison ivy. About 2-3 times a year box turtles wander through our yard and I found this one in the rose garden.
When Shane and I went monarch hunting at Valley Forge yesterday, there were at least a dozen butterflies flitting around. It’s the most we've seen at once. 2-3 adults is the usual amount. The milkweed is in full bloom, so we had to be careful as we hunted because the fields were humming with the sounds of bees. We should have taken our net so we could do a catch and release to check for Oe. There’s always next week. In our yard the purple coneflowers will soon be blooming and they always bring in the butterflies, especially the monarchs. So, we’ll keep a close watch on our milkweed for eggs and caterpillars. We did release one female this week. She decided to sit on my hand for a bit before flying up to an oak tree. We give our butterflies numbers instead of names, since I track their data on an Excel sheet. This one is #11.
6/21/09 Happy Father’s Day! Joel, my husband, has been spending his day playing Fallout3 and is planning to install the Blu Ray burner he just bought. Ultimately, he’ll need to upgrade his Adobe programs and buy a high def video camera to do what he wants, which is to record family movies in high def. Of course, we need a new roof first. . .
Lion Clip There was a time when I thought it was silly to give a cat a lion clip. And then last year Titan (aka, His Majesty, Lord Titan, etc.) decided that he didn’t want to be brushed. So, we started to take him to the vet for an annual lion clip and bath. He gets sedated for this procedure. The photo to the right shows him a month after this year’s cut. I figure $80 at the vet is cheaper than 2-3 trips to the emergency room (at $75 per trip) with a cat bite. I speak from experience. Several years ago, I attempted to rescue Max from the jaws of our neighbor’s husky (this dog catches and eats squirrels). Max bit my finger real good. Although I went right to the emergency room, it required 2 more trips and an IV of antibiotics. I came close to loosing my finger. Max, by the way, only lost a little fur.
Here’s Titan drinking from the sink. Joel taught Max and Aslan (who is in kitty heaven) to do this. They taught all the rest of our cats. You’d think the cats prefer fresh, clean water. This is not so. We get water in our basement and they like drinking that too.
I can’t recall when we’ve had so much rain in the spring! The gardens are incredibly lush. One of these days I’ll need to do some weeding and remove the poison ivy that’s sprouting up. Both Shane and Joel get it. The yellow plants below are evening primrose, which light up the whole yard for the first 2 weeks of June. The hedge roses are Scarlet Meidiland Roses. They are supposed to grow 3-4 feet in height. Mine often reach 6-8 feet -- even in years of drought.
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6/20/09 Monarch Date Before I knew we were going to have 4 females, I was toying with the idea of keeping a pair of butterflies and building a rearing cage. I told Shane, who will be 8 next month, and he asked, "So they can have a date?" Well, something like that. Of course, we had 4 females so that squashed that idea.
Some thing (not monarchs) has been munching the seeding milkweeds that I planted, so Shane and I went to some local garden centers and picked up 1 yellow butterfly weed, 1 large orange butterfly weed and 7 swamp milkweeds. I also ordered some tropical milkweed and butterfly weed from Rose Franklin. I read one scientifc study (click on Latest Research and then study #2) that suggested the tropical milkweed properties are better at fighting Oe than the swamp milkweed. In which case, we’ll just use the swamp milkweed to lure them to our yard and then use our other types of milkweed to feed them. The study didn’t cover butterfly weed or common milkweed.
 | 6/15/09 1st Butterfly We welcomed our 1st buttefly today. Zoe gives him a sniff, while Max pays no attention. Titan was not invited for the photo because he went instantly into attack mode. A big thanks to Larry (Butterflies and Wildlife.com) for finding the quick washer modification for my microscope as it did make a difference in clarity. I also removed the filter wheel (which I don’t use) so that I could dust the stage better. |
6/14/09 It’s been raining quite a bit. We feel like we’re living in Seattle! We didn’t add any new monarchs to the nursery, but we expect to have our first butterflies this week. Guess I better dust off the microscope! In regard to the propogation experiment, we are down to 8 milkweed on the window sill and 9 in the tray. A fugus hit some of the ones in the tray.
6/6/09 Shane and I went hunting for more caterpillars at Valley Forge and came home with 2. Our time was cut short because Shane’s allergies kicked up as we walked through the grass that was going to seed and which was as tall as he was. Next week I’ll give him some Benadryl before we go hunting.
5/31/09 Fly Victim Sadly, our 1st chrysalis was a host to a fly larva, but that is part of the study. When Shane and I went to gather milkweed and caterpillars at Valley Forge today, we startled 2 mating monarchs, which are the first butterflies we’ve seen.
5/25/09 Our 5th instar is now our 1st chrysalis! We anticipate him/her to eclose around June 4th.
5/24/09 I planted all of my seeding milkweed plants that I’ve been growing indoors with some help from Shane. That brings our total to over 70 of them! It’s supposed to be rainy this week, so it will be a good start for them. Joel thought I was crazy at first for planting weeds in my gardens, but I pointed out that this will mean monitoring only one site. And eventually, we will be able to get most of our milkweed from our yard instead of having to drive somewhere to get it.
5/23/09 Shane and I went for a hike at the park and found a 5th instar caterpillar. That means the first butterflies arrived in our area around the beginning of May, which is when the milkweed started to grow.
5/21/09 Our First Caterpillars of the Season While we haven’t seen any monarch butterflies, Joel and I found 5 1st instar caterpillars on a mountain bike ride at the park. We had stopped at a railroad crossing to let the train go by, and decided to check the milkweed while waiting. I put the caterpillars and milkweed in a slide lock plastic bag and made a "balloon" of it. Then I put it in my saddle pack for a safe ride back to the car. And so begins this year’s monarch adventure! Incidentally, this was also our 21st wedding anniversary!
5/1/09 Milkweed Starting to Grow The milkweed has started to grow, but we haven’t seen any monarch butterflies. We’ve had black and tiger swallowtials visit our flowers along with some cabbage butterflies. The hummingbirds are visiting our feeders.
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