Mt. Pleasant – September 2016

Earlier this month I posted some images of ‘minutes in the meadow’ at Mt. Pleasant – but fall is such a great time around the Howard County Conservancy place that I more to share from other times I was at Mt. Pleasant. The black walnuts are still green but beginning to turn. Their out hull will be oozing black before too long.

The pine trees have their cones – like decorations.

The horse nettles are still blooming

But there are fruits that are forming as well.

The chicory is still blooming too

And hoverflies abound.

But the big showy plant of September is the goldenrod – it is a sweep of yellow in the meadow –

Tall and lush --- providing food for the butterflies. The monarchs need it for their migration southward.

In our area – the fall usually peaks in mid to late October. We have had some leaves falling already – not pretty ones; the early leaf fall has been from dry weather in late summer. We are getting some rain this week but it may to too late to give us a brilliant fall. October will tell.

Insects in our Garden

A few days ago was out working in our garden by 7 AM – pulling weeds and cutting spent flower stalks in our flower beds…but I got sidetracked observing insects. The first I noticed were on the skeleton of a milkweed plant. The milkweed tussock caterpillars had eaten all the leaves leaving only the stem and the larger veins of the leaves. They had started crawling over to the bush next to the stem. It seemed like there were hundreds of caterpillars.

After I finished some work, I went inside to clean up and recover from heat. I started wondering if the caterpillars would find the other milkweed plants that were about 5 feet away from the one they had consumed. I went to check at 9 and they had indeed found another plant! I continued to check periodically throughout the day. The gradually spread to 3 more plants. Sometimes they would appear very active and other times they would be resting underneath a leave that was still whole. When they ate, individuals worked on the leaf from the top and the bottom. It was a mass feeding frenzy.

The next surprise came the following morning. I went outside and found that the caterpillars had been active overnight and seemed to be larger. When I went back to check an hour later – more than half of them were not anywhere on the milkweed and I watched as more of them dropped off the plants. It was time for them to go roaming in the leaf litter!

On one of the checks of the caterpillars, I noticed some insects on a blazing start that was in bloom. They were tiny – about a quarter inch. The yellow and black insect is a syrphid or hoverfly.

There were two other insects on the plant but they stayed down in the flowers so much that it was hard to get a good identification.

Maybe some kind of bee?

The two types of insects did interact a little…did not seem to like the other being nearby.

I was very pleased with the performance of my camera (Canon PowerShot SX710HS) and the monopod’s contribution to stabilizing the camera to get clear images.