Butterflies in the Garden

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Last weekend at Brookside Gardens there were a lot of flowers blooming (Joe Pye Weed and Coneflowers) in the high heat and attracting butterflies. Most of the butterflies were Tiger Swallowtails. I took pictures and then categorized them when I got home. The males are slightly smaller and less colorful.

The females are larger and have more blue scales.

And then there are the dark morphs of the tiger swallowtail that are all female.

While I was doing the categorization, I found one that was not a tiger swallowtail. It was a Spicebush Swallowtail! It looks very similar and I never try to distinguish these dark swallowtails in the field. I just take pictures and make the identification when I get home.

There was some butterfly drama just before I went into my Wings of Fancy shift. In the garden near the conservatory give shop – there was a butterfly moving oddly. I quickly determined that it wasn’t the butterfly moving itself; it was a praying mantis eating the butterfly under a flower! One less dark morph of the tiger swallowtail in the garden….

Sharing Wings of Fancy

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I enjoy Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy so much that it’s my favorite place to take guests. This past weekend, my daughter was visiting, and we headed to the exhibit just at it opened. The caterpillars are big enough to see easily – particularly the spicebush swallowtail caterpillars with their eye spots that make them appear more ferocious than they are.

The high point of the morning was when a blue morpho butterfly decided that my daughter’s nail polish was like its own color. The blue (or pink/purple in different light) in both cases is a mechanical color rather than a pigment. The butterfly ‘tasted’ the color with its proboscis on each toenail then crawled up onto the sandal before flying way!

Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy – May 2018

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I volunteered for 5 shifts at Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy butterfly exhibit. I visited once during a non-shift day as well in May; there is relatively little time to take butterfly pictures before visitors start arriving and I must focus on them.

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During one calm morning in the caterpillar house, there was a female cecropia moth that had emerged from a cocoon – on that grew as a caterpillar in the caterpillar house last summer and overwintered at Brookside. It was released in the garden later that day. The moths don’t eat as adult…they simply try to find a mate and lay then lay eggs.

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When I did come as a visitor, I was most interested in getting heads and eyes of butterflies. I’m always a little surprised at the color and complexity around the head…also the variation in eyes.

I have been able to take a few caterpillar pictures. The longwing caterpillars were only about ¼ inch long when I photographed them.

The spicebush swallowtail caterpillar was already about an inch long and had visible eye spots.

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On the walk up to the ticket taker table, I am checking the milkweed plants for Monarch butterfly caterpillars. So far, I haven’t found any although there are some leaves that have holes…something is eating the leaves. The flowers are beginning to form, and I did see a lady bug on one of the youngest leaves. Hopefully there will be caterpillars soon.

The other type of pictures I like to try before my shift begins are macro shots of flowers in the Brookside Gardens. I usually get there about 8:30 AM and the light is still good….not still the lemony color of just after dawn but still mellow…better than mid-day. The best of the best of those pictures are for another post.

Macro Photography with a Smartphone

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Before my second shift at Brookside Garden’s Wings of Fancy exhibit, I spent a few minutes doing some macrophotography with my Smartphone. I ordered a clip-on macro lens from Amazon last fall to use to photograph macroinvertebrates but haven’t done a lot of other photography with it until now.

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Brookside Gardens is a great place to experiment. There is so much in bloom right now including the buckeye near the conservatory. The flower has a very odd shape through the macro lens (it looks like it has Mickey Mouse ears!). Even the tips of evergreen shrubs become something unexpected.

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The center of the dogwood bloom is a riot of shapes. I’m going to photograph them again next time I go to see how it changes as the seeds start to develop.

Dandelion seed puffs are recognizable.

Just about any flowers are good subjects for macrophotography.

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I ran out of time in the garden. My shift was beginning. I got one last picture just before the first visitors came into the exhibit – a spicebush butterfly egg on spicebush leaf. It looks like a very tiny pearl.

Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillar

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The food plant for the Spicebush Swallowtail’s caterpillar is spicebush – an understory tree here in Maryland. When the caterpillars get larger, they have spots on their head that look like eyes…and giver the illusions of a snake! They probably fool quite a few predators.

The caterpillars also fold leaves around themselves when they are not active and that folded leaf may be the easiest way to spot them in the wild. Next time I hike through a forest that I know has spicebush – I’ll be taking a few minutes to look at the leaves.

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The caterpillars I photographed (and observed) were in the caterpillar house of Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy. When the caterpillars are large enough to pupate, they expel the waste in their gut and turn from green to yellow orange. They make a big effort to leave the food plant. Since the food plant is in a pot, the caterpillars trek around the rim then fall off…trek some more…we put them in a pupation chamber so they don’t get stepped on!

Volunteering at Wings of Fancy at Brookside Gardens XI-XIV

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The first 4 shifts at Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy in August were not as hot as some of the shifts in July and I settled into the rotation. The discovery station always seemed to be the most crowded hour of the shift. There is so much there: butterflies emerging from chrysalises, plants that butterflies are laying eggs on, and touch samples (laminated butterfly wings for young children…butterflies that have succumbed for adults and older children).

Before the 11th shift, I was a little late and only had time to take a few pictures along the walk up to the exhibit…but one was a Monarch butterfly; they’ve become rare enough to be a little celebration every time I see one.

The little hike before the 12th shift was on the nature center board walk where I saw a spider excise a leaf that had been blown into its web; it was a neat job and the web was left intact.

A beetle was crawling down one of the big trees.

I walked back toward some of the formal gardens and saw a dragonfly in the mulch

And some odd growths on a bald cypress (fungus?).

It was raining before the 13th shift (and for the rest of the day). I took two quick pictures with my cell phone before going into the conservatory to start my shift…some very well cypress cones

And flowers in a wet garden bed.

The 14th shift was on a bright and sunny day. I went overboard with pictures! There a spicebush butterfly fluttering around the rose garden – this is one of the few images I got that was not blurred with its motion.

The roses in the garden were covered with water droplets from morning dew…somehow I like the flowers even better with the droplets.

There was a goldfinch enjoying one of the other plants. It contorted itself to get ‘the goodie’ from the plant.

As I walked back toward the conservatory – a Monarch butterfly was enjoying some flowers…and I zoomed to focus on how it was using its proboscis.

Previous posts re Volunteering at Wings of Fancy: prep, I, II-IV, V-X.