Now it is June 15, 2017. In the morning, I noticed the larger caterpillar was hanging beneath a leaf and curling upwards. Might it be about to form a chrysalis or cocoon? (Apologies for the lack of focus. I am using a three year old cell phone for this!)
Caterpillar beginning to form a chrysalis.
By the afternoon, the chrysalis had been formed.
The same day, three hours later, it is now a chrysalis.
If you want to watch the process, this is a great video by Jude Adamson.
First I must say I am not much of an entomologist, so I am not even going to try to nail down the species of insects (and arthropods) I have seen. But unsurprisingly, as I began watering the butterfly garden every day, I began to see more and more insects. The first ones were beetles, many of which resembled cockroaches, and ants. Ants are everywhere! In this first picture you can see some beetles that some other creature ripped the heads from and devoured. Isn't nature a beautiful thing? And then I began to see more and more predators, like crickets, spiders, and mantises. The most spectacular insect we have is a tarantula hawk. These are HUGE wasps with black bodies and orange wings. Their sting is apparently VERY painful, but luckily they are hard to get angry and most of the time they are just eating nectar from flowers like bees. However, I also watched one investigate a burrow in the garden, presumably looking for a tarantula. Female tarantula hawks will p...
June 16, 2017. We still have a caterpillar eating away at the milkweed before it can form a chrysalis. I watered everything deeply before taking off to the Grand Canyon for the weekend with some family visiting from Iceland.
One of the purposes of this garden is to capture and use rainwater, not only that which falls from the sky but also that caught by the large cisterns we have on campus. The cisterns have been there for years but no one has ever made good use of the water until now (as far as I know). There are two cisterns close to the butterfly garden, and both were about half full at the beginning of June when I started using them. If you place your hand on the side of the cistern, you can feel a temperature difference where the water is. In the hot afternoons when bright sunlight is shining on it, the metal feels cooler where the water is. In the mornings, it feels warmer. The water level is now about a foot above the concrete platform, and the water pressure is lessening. I really hope we get some good thunderstorms soon! Then we can see how the garden works at collecting water in the basins, and we can get more water into the cisterns from the roofs.
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