The Destructive Power of Butterflies

Over the years, I have taken many photos of beautiful things at our place, including flowers and their various butterflies visitors. Lately we have seen hordes of variable cattleheart butterflies feasting on Pride of Barbados and verbena flowers.  They also go to cashew, hibiscus, sea grape, yellow alder, mango and almost any other flower.  Except they don't go to lily flowers.  The video below shows the butterfly action around Pride of Barbados flowers.

These Variable Cattlehearts are in the swallowtail family.  They are  mostly black with red spots along the rear edge of the hindwing and variable markings on the upper surface of the front wings.

Coincident with the uptick in butterfly numbers, I noticed that our normally lush crinum lilies (the strong smelling lilies, Roy!) looking pretty sad.

Crinum lily plants last August, looking robust and bearing many flowers.

Crinum lily plants yesterday - they look like they are melting.

The lily plants were covered in caterpillars of the Variable Cattleheart butterfly.

The caterpillars chomp along the leaf surface like a combine harvesting hay and spitting bales of poop in their wake.

This individual is pretty fat and may soon be ready to make a chrysalis.

I think the lilies will survive the onslaught; they have large bulbs similar to an amaryllis lily.  Although they look pretty rough right now, we will trim off the damaged leaves once the caterpillars are done and hopefully new leaves will emerge soon.  In the meantime we will enjoy the adult butterflies as they swarm the flowers and flit about in the sunshine.  We will also try to forgive them their destructive nature; they really can't help it.

Escape of the (not so) Wee Beasties

A week or so ago, I wrote about the caterpillars that I found on one of the mango trees which I decided to try to rear to see what the adult is.  I started with 6 caterpillars and put 3 each in 2 different containers with leaves from the mango I found them on.  Since then half have died, but 3 are thriving; 2 in one container and 1 in the other.  When I checked on them this morning they were doing fine.  I was a little concerned about the container with 2 not getting enough air exchange, so I left the top off.  At about 1:30 all was well when I showed them to a visitor, but I did not take the time to replace the lid.  You know what happened next...  

While out taking compost to the box around 3:00, I stopped to get some fresh mango leaves for the beasties.  But when I looked in their container I saw that 2 had made their escape!  I needed to find them so Max didn't wind up on the bad end of a close encounter with them.  I didn't see them on the veranda floor, which I checked first so I didn't accidentally squish them.  I didn't see them on pots or plants next to where their container was; I didn't see them on the screen, or on the wall.   I kept looking and found the 2 of them within about a foot of each other and only about 8 feet from where they started.  Each one was on the side of a plant pot, one fig and one diffenbachia.  I collected them on the fresh leaves, being careful not to touch them with my fingers at the risk of suffering from their stinging hairs, and took the opportunity to get some new photos. 

Its little head is usually retracted into its body.

Another good view of the head.

The grey hairs belong to the cat, but all the black and brown hairs are the hairs of the beastie.

Here is the other escapee with the usual lowered head position, all the better for eating.  Now that it is bigger, it can eat through the thickness of the whole leaf instead of just vacuuming up the surface layer of cells.

They are big enough now that I can replace the plastic with little holes that I was using for the lids, with screen.  Don't want them to get away again - I still haven't been able to ID them.  I'm sure they are dead common around here.  I bet at the plant nursery they can help me out.

Dawn (again!) and Wee Beasties

How can I not take pictures of dawn when it is so spectacular?  

 

 

I found a group of newly hatched, tiny, caterpillars on one of our mango trees.   I think these wee beasts grow up to be big, leaf-crunching beasts.  I am trying to rear them to see what they turn into.   I'll try to ID them.  In the meantime, I am keeping them supplied with fresh mango leaves.  The one below is already 2 or 3 times as big as was when I found them.

Look at those wild hairs!

 More as they grow...

Mofongo and A Jay's gotta eat, too!

We had some green plantains, so Dennis decided to make mofongo.  For those of you not familiar with plantains, they look like bananas on steroids; which isn't surprising since they are close relatives of bananas.  Unlike bananas, you can't eat plantains raw.  But there are so many things you can make from plantains.  I haven't met a plantain I didn't like.  ;-)  You use green plantains to make savory dishes, like mofongo and tostones, yellow plantains to make some dessert-type dishes as the starch starts to turn to sugar, and fully ripe black plantains to make other things I haven't tried yet.  So far I have eaten our plantains before they got that far!  

So Dennis set out to make mofongo, which he had never made before.  I have eaten it several times and really enjoyed it.  If there are any mofongo purists reading this, you may want to avert your eyes from the upcoming description!  Every recipe we have seen for mofongo calls for bacon or other fatty pork.  I thought this would be a problem for Dennis since he does not eat red meat; he only eats fish, shellfish, or poultry.  So I was surprised when he bought real pork bacon for this recipe instead of turkey bacon which he could not obtain.  I knew then that he was determined to make real mofongo.  So much for good intentions.  I helped him peel the green plantains which he then sliced into 2 inch thick sections before frying them in deep oil.  For the first batch, he had the temp too high or cooked them a little too long, because the outside got hard and crispy.  The next ones were a little better, but still too hard.  We used them any way.  The next step calls for smashing the cooked plantains with oil and garlic  and then add in the crumbled bacon to make something akin to very dry and lumpy mashed potatoes.  This was difficult to do with the over-cooked plantains, but we persevered and added extra oil to compensate for the dryness.  

Normally mofongo is served in large balls formed from the mashed plantains.  Sometimes the balls are stuffed with other meat or fillings.  Ours was still too dry so we added some cooked calaloo (sort of like spinach but tropical) and mushrooms to try to make it more moist.  It tasted pretty good at this point, but we planned to eat it the next day, so Dennis put in the fridge.  When he got it out the next day it was drier than ever!  The chunks of plantain were hard and stiff, totally inedible.  So I suggested that he steam it.  He did and it actually worked, although I don't think the end product actually qualifies as mofongo, it did taste pretty good.  But it tasted best when stuffed in those peppers with brie cheese.  We will explore that taste combination in future efforts, but will try for a more traditional mofongo first.

We were sitting on the veranda (that's where we are most of time, it seems) and I say a brown jay on a palm frond, which seemed unusual. It was hopping along the rib so I got some photos of it.

What is the jay doing on the palm?  They usually hang out in the seagrape or tropical almond tree.

Yes, I'm looking at you!

 It joined its sibling on another frond and the sibling (to the rear) had something in its beak.

You can see a small out of focus green thing in the jay's beak.

 The jay started dragging the green back and forth along the leaflets of the palm frond and carried on for some time.

It finally dawned on me that it was either trying disarm a wasp or perhaps scrape stinging hairs off a caterpillar.  So I went out to see what I could find on the palm fronds.  I found one large caterpillar about 2 inches long on the underside of a palm frond.

The caterpillar was very handily located just over my head.  My telephoto lens was no use; I had to go back in for the normal lens.

 I took photos from as many angles as possible.

I can't tell which end is which.

Look at all those spines.

Is this the front or the rear?

Beautiful colors.

I was going to watch it throughout the day to see if I could tell which end is which, but within a couple of hours, this one was dinner for a brown jay.  I'll keep an eye out for others and also try to key this one out.  Hope to have an update soon.

Hummingbird Moth Caterpillars, the Garden Path, and an Unexpected Avian Visitor

Two weeks ago I blogged about the Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth laying eggs on a little honeysuckle plant that had volunteered in the garden.  Some of the eggs have hatched and i have tried to follow the little caterpillars. 

This just hatched caterpillar was so small that I didn't know it was there until I looked at the photos  Of course I ran back out to find it and photograph it on purpose.  Tiny little thing, isn't it?

Here is another fresh one.  You can see a clear eggshell in the background.

The little black "tail" makes them look like dachshunds.

I took these next 2 photos  today.  This one is growing larger; you can gauge its size in comparison to the tip of my index finger. 

It still has a long way to go, size-wise.

My project for today and tomorrow is to finish the garden path section that had been removed 2 or 3 years ago when we put the patio in.  I got a fair amount done today. First I weeded that section of the garden and spread shredded bark mulch that had been sitting there in a pile for 2 or so years. I know, I know - I put the "pro" in procrastinate.  ;-)  I rough-prepped the ground and was able to get about 15 feet of stone positioned and settled in place.

Here is the part of the path I did today starting from the patio and going toward the side to meet up with the path that goes around the side and across the front to the driveway.

I have about 7 feet left to do.  It will be sort of like the meeting of the Union and Pacific railway lines.  No one to blame but myself if they don't line up.  

That was hard work because most of the stone was in the back yard and I had to haul it up the steps to the side yard.  I also spread 7 wheel barrow loads of mulch, which Dennis very kindly loaded and wheeled to me, and did a lot of weeding.  But prepping the ground for the path was the hardest.  I was inside taking a break while reading my favorite blogs when I heard this loud commotion outside.  It sounded sort of like the blue jays when they imitate a red-shouldered hawk, but much louder and really carrying on for some time.  I ran outside to see what it could be and saw this in a tree in the woods behind our house:

A bald eagle!

These are huge birds - up to 40 inches tall with a wingspan of up to 90 inches!

It is not unusual to see eagles soaring overhead around here, but I have never seen one in a tree except along the Mississippi River or one of the other rivers around here - certainly never in our woods!

Too bad the light was against me, but with some tweaking - OK, a lot of tweaking, the photos aren't too bad.  And  what a thrill!

It was not spooked by me and the camera or even by me calling to Dennis to come and see.  It hung around for about 10-15 minutes (enough time for me to take 93 photos, most of them too poor to keep) before flying off.  I tell you, it made my day.