Pictures Of The Week 9

These are the eggs of the beneficial Green Lacewing. The eggs are attached to the ends of slender strands, which helps prevent cannibalism. The larvae are such voracious eaters when they hatch that they would devour each other without this kind of separation. I've found Green Lacewing eggs on plants, brick walls, doorframes...and the eggs can be oriented in any direction. You can order Green Lacewing eggs online to add to your garden, but we have so many naturally in our yard that I've never needed to order them. I do remove the eggs from plants where butterfly caterpillars have just hatched because even though the Green Lacewing larvae are called "aphid lions", they'll eat just about any insect they can.

We have several mounds of this Coral Fungus growing in one of our flowerbeds. It feeds on decaying organic matter. There are several types of Coral Fungi, some of which are edible, but I don't know which kind this is, so I won't be eating it. For more information on this and other fungi, HERE's a guy who really knows his 'shrooms.

This is the center of the stem of Crossivne (Bignonia capreaolata) that gives the plant its name. Crossvine is a good North American native plant and an incredibly fast grower. It tends to swallow everything around it. The trumpet-shaped flowers bloom in the spring just in time for the northward migration of Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds.

This is the fifth year these Barn Swallows have nested over our front door. Each year they come back and build the nest a little bit higher. Right now there are five eggs in the nest. The photos on the right are our view if we peek out the front door (luckily we don't use the front door very often). You can click on any of the photos to make them larger. There are lots of videos and photos of these Barn Swallows through the years on this website.

Even though Mourning Doves are some of most common birds in our yard, this is the first time I've found one of their nests. It's in a Crape Myrtle tree about seven feet off the ground. The nest doesn't look very sturdy, but it just withstood a weekend of seriously intense weather. There are only two eggs in the nest, which is normal for Mourning Doves. The birds are so big I don't know how they're going to fit in that small nest once they hatch.

This is a Syrphid Fly, also known as a Flower Fly or a Hover Fly. I believe the flower it's on is a Soapwort, but I'm not sure because it came from a bag of mixed wildflower seeds. Planting those seeds may have been a bad idea because I'm sure there were lots of non-native plants (like Soapwort, which is native to Europe but has naturalized in North America). Hopefully there weren't any invasive plants included -- time will tell. Syrphid Flies are beneficial garden insects because their larvae feed on common pests like aphids.

This Stink Bug is using its proboscis to suck the juice out of the berry of the Serviceberry tree. Serviceberries are great trees that are native to North America. In early spring our Serviceberries have white flowers before the leaves come in, the tiny fruit is delicious (even to humans), and they're host plants for some butterflies including the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Mockingbirds love the fruit, but this is the first time I've seen an insect eating it.

This Mockingbird nest is about seven feet off the ground. I used a small mirror to get a photo of the eggs. The Mockingbirds were not happy with me at all. They're pretty ferocious defenders of the nest - squawking and swooping at you if you come to close. I even felt one brush the back of my neck while I was walking away.

A Jumping Spider caught a fly as big as he is. They're one of the fastest types of spider, which makes them great hunters as you can see. Spiders that don't use webs to catch prey are called active hunters. These spiders have eight eyes, four of which you can see prominently on the front of their head.

This is another flower from the seed mix I shouldn't have planted. If you want a wildflower seed mix, search online for native mixtures. That way you won't introduce anything invasive to your yard. The one good thing about this seed mix is it's given me new subjects to photograph.

These are the Barn Swallows that return to this nest over our front door every year. The pictured fledglings left the nest a few weeks ago - four out of five survived to adulthood. Now the parents are sitting on another clutch of eggs (some seasons they only produce one clutch of eggs). As you can see, they make quite a mess, but we'd be sad if they didn't come back. This is the fifth year we've had them, so this "habitat" has helped raise about 25 Barn Swallows to adulthood.

Also known as Sow Bugs, Pill Bugs, and Woodlice, Roly Polys are common in our yard, but this was the first time I ever saw them mating. They're not insects, they're crustaceans. They actually breathe with gills instead of lungs. They get the name Roly Poly because when threatened (or touched by people) they roll up into a ball. Click HERE for 10 cool facts about Roly Polys.

I just found these yesterday, which seems really late in the year for our first caterpillars. On the left is a Gulf Fritillary caterpillar on its host plant Passion Flower. On the right is a Black Swallowtail caterpillar on one of its host plants, Fennel. I found about 20 of the Black Swallowtail caterpillars and just the one Gulf Fritillary caterpillar. They're in protective enclosures now. Last year a Monarch butterfly laid about 100 eggs in the first week of April, but we haven't seen a single Monarch caterpillar this year.

This is the first time I've ever seen a caterpillar form its chrysalis on another chrysalis. These are two Black Swallowtail pupae in a protective enclosure. I'm not sure if the second one will interfere with the first one eclosing, but I'll keep an eye on it.

I was only able to get one shot of this skink before it ran off, and I haven't seen it again. I've seen two different explanations online for skinks growing two tails. One is that its tail was injured but not removed, but it started growing a second tail at the site of the injury anyway. The other is that its tail was broken off, the new one started to grow, and then the new one was injured, so it regrew two tails at once. Not sure what happened in this case.

We very rarely see dragonflies come to our patio light. I've always assumed that the ones that do are older and disoriented because they're not chasing the insects that are drawn to the light - they're always incactive like this one was. This is a female Common Whitetail - the males have a white abdomen so the females are stuck with the name even though their abdomens are brown. This one has a hitchhiker on one of its wings on the left. It looks like some type of leafhopper.