A Garden Month (to 24 Aug 2019) Pictures follow Even back in late July some end-of-summery things were already being noticed such as a small group of Waxwings taking berries from the Dogwood bushes on a hot and windy day … the sort of day on which it is perfect for Japanese Beetles to [...]
Garden Creatures The sun at just the right angle illuminated a horizontal band of white "fluff" in a Pagoda Dogwood tree and it warranted a better look. At first appearances one thinks of Tent Moth caterpillars but this is the wrong sort of tree. Closer inspection found that most of the affected area [...]
This and That Coming back from a walk we found a Banded Hairstreak butterfly (Satyrium calanus) on the "other" sort of milkweed (Asclepia tuberosum). They only open their wings to fly away but the upper surface isn't much more colourful than this. ** Not bad photo for one taken with an iPhone, albeit it [...]
A few days ago I shared the picture below on Facebook. It's a Common Red Soldier Beetle on the flower of Wild Carrot. I knew that the wild carrot is another of those alien invader plants from Europe brought over by early settlers but assumed that the beetle, pretty common here, was [...]
Very Tiny Bees A very trending topic, as they say, at the moment is how to encourage pollinator species not to go extinct die to habitat loss, insecticidal sprays and climate change. This something we are hastily in favour of. Trouble is, when we think about pollinators we usually think [...]
Text here Painted Lady Vanessa carduis Starting to appear in the garden now the June heat is beginning to build up Text here Canadian Tiger Swallowtail Papillio canadensis Another garden visitor - also seen today, but not photographed, a Black Swallowtail (Papillio polyxenes) [...]
Nest demolition ... A few years ago we were walking a forest trail in late autumn just before things started to get cold, when we heard a furious thumping and banging nearby that caused us to think we were about to be attacked by a bear or a lumberjack. Eventually we realised the noise [...]
Polygonia comma - Eastern Comma Butterfly Appeared in the wildlife garden late afternoon and spent some time flying around the pool, settling here and there as it took the fancy. Several times alighted on the bark of a maple tree - see comment below about sap feeeding. Generally uncommon, the Eastern Comma is rarely [...]
Polyomattus icarus Although there are a dozen or more native hairstreak butterflies in southern Quebec, the one we seem to get most regularly in the garden is the European Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus) that arrived in Canada not many years ago in the vicinity of Mirabel airport to the north of city and has [...]
Monarch caterpillar on common milkweed (with video) Surprisingly active larva working it's way through the flowers of a common milkweed (Asclepis syriaca) in the garden We are seeing quite a number of monarch butterflies this year on the milkweed patches in our garden as well as on the town milkweed garden and in the [...]