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 [...]
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) [...]
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 [...]
A Good Year Thus we come to the end of another year of wildlife gardening in our small suburban "nature reserve". We have enjoyed telling you, week by week, what we have done and seen and enjoyed and we know from comments received that many readers of the journal have found something to interest [...]
Now we have reached mid-September we are already seeing, in neighbouring gardens, the armies of neatnick gardeners (and garden contractors) intent on making the world “tidy” before winter. So annoying, so unnecessary … they should relax and make their gardens “messy” ones and leave the cleaning until spring when there isn’t much else to [...]
The Gardeners are back from a superb week’s birding on Grand Manan (if that sort of thing interests you there is a short series of posts with photographs of birds and the like at http://www.greenbirding.ca). Anyway - here we are in the garden again and in the short time we were away things have [...]
After many months of playing the part of a builder's yard, the garden is finally starting to return to its former shape (not glory yet, but we'll get there in time). It's amazing the effect a bit of decent turf - or sod as Canada calls the stuff - and some warm rain can have [...]
Another stunningly hot day today - +30degC in the shade and far too hot to anything but hide next to the AC outlets in the house. For all that, a circuit of the grounds at Sparroworks Hall was required just to see what was out and about. Painted Ladies were out and about once more, [...]