Newborn Monarch Under Microscope

Found this little guy on our milkweed this morning. I watched it for a while and he was so afraid to leave the safety of the rib of the leaf where he clung... or so it seemed to me :)

Here are some images of an unhatched egg from the same plant under the microscope. I had to see if it really looked like the corn cob image in the children's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar - it does!

Both larva and egg are back in the garden on the milkweed now to "...spin and die, to live again a butterfly."

Here is a video of a monarch larva cocooning. It's from an earlier set of monarchs from a few weeks ago. Interestingly, there were three of them - two under our kitchen window and one on this loose window we had leaning against the wall in the garden - and they all cocooned on the same day and emerged from their cocoons on the same day.

They cocooned March 16, 2015. And then emerged April 2, 2015. Exactly 17 days. Here is the butterfly getting ready to emerge - the cocoon becomes translucent and the creature to emerge is clearly visible. 

In case all of this makes you want to sing for joy, you can!

Here's a link to another post with more pictures of the Monarch under the microscope: http://thechangingyearoc.blogspot.com/2014/07/monarch.html

Bull Frogs and Giant Water Bugs

October 9, 2013 was the first heavy rain of the season. The kids loved everything about it from the feel of the cool weather to the smell outside, hoping it would be like that for Christmas Eve "our white Christmas."

The following day in the partly sunny creek we found...

Bullfrog tadpoles (Lithobates (Rana) catesbianus?) minnows, dragon fly larva

Mayfly larva?

Damselfly larva?

Unidentified beetle

Soldier Fly Larva (Stratiomys)

Unidentified, possibly crane fly larva

I once had one of the giant water bugs below, which I thought had died, dried out on a paper towel on the table to paint in my journal. After about 30 minutes, it started to walk off the table! It is capable of living out of the water for some time and is known at night to fly towards electric lights, which it must think is the moon, but why fly towards the moon? It is capable of eating creatures much larger than itself, even snakes. They have an extremely painful bite, but are not aggressive towards humans. They're also popular food in Thailand according to Wikipedia!

Giant Water Bug "Toebiter" (Belostomatidae) with its beak in a minnow

Apparently they are cannibalistic!