Gleanings of the Week Ending July 14, 2018

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Top 25 Birds of Protected Areas  and Top 25 Birds of Asia – Several collections of ’25 birds’ were in my news feeds as I was catching up after returning from Texas.

BBC - Future - Thai cave: How life in darkness could affect trapped boys and BBC - Future - Cave rescue: The dangerous diseases lurking underground – I wondered why the sensationalism of the mainstream media coverage did not include more of these aspects of the story.

Feeling young could mean your brain is aging more slowly: The first study to link subjective age to biological age shows that elderly people who feel younger have less signs of brain aging -- ScienceDaily – Feeling young is a big plus!

Minimizing Your Exposure to Pesticides in Produce: Help from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) Dirty Dozen List | Berkeley Wellness – The ranking comes out every year…I use it to prioritize which veggies/fruits I buy ‘organic.’ Of course – during the summer I am eating veggies from the local Community Support Agriculture which is all organic.

Scientists capture breaking of glacier in Greenland: Event points to forces behind global sea-level rise -- ScienceDaily – There is a link to the video at the bottom of the post….well worth watching. Awesome ice.

The Ultimate Guide to Yellowstone Wildlife Viewing – Cool Green Science – I reminder of a place I want to visit again.

Beaded Necklaces: Complex Restringing | In the Artifact Lab – It took 25 meters of string to do the work!

Take a VR Tour of an Egyptian Queen’s Elaborate Tomb | Smart News | Smithsonian -  Another attempt to create ways to experience a place without actually being there…and potentially damaging it.

Poison Ivy: Busting 6 Myths to Avoid the Itch – Cool Green Science – It’s that time of year. In Maryland there is a lot of poison ivy but I’ve managed to avoid it in recent years….or maybe it is the gardening gloves with gauntlets that cover most of my arm and tucking my pants into my socks (for ticks…but also means there is no skin exposed to poison ivy either.

Gene therapy shown to cure type 2 diabetes and obesity in mice, researchers report -- ScienceDaily – Early days…but wouldn’t it be wonderful if something like this would work form humans?

Belmont Hikes with Summer Campers I

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I have started weekly hikes with summer campers at Howard County Conservancy’s Belmont location. The theme for this week was ‘Fossils and Feathers’ – to I focused on birds during the hike. The cardinal flowers near the entrance to the Carriage House (the camp headquarters) have evidently attracted some hummingbirds but there were too many people about while I was there to see them.

I was early enough that I walked around to see how the butterfly meadow looks during its first season. It’s mostly grass!

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I photographed some of the flowers that are there among the grass. I hope the butterflies find them!

There were two groups of campers; the first group to hike were the younger children. We hiked down to the pond. There are birdhouses along the way down the grassy path through the newly mowed field. The tree swallows were very active…and then we saw purple martins in their house and flying off toward the pond. Turkey vultures made slow circles in the sky. There were red-winged black birds around the pond and we talked about other birds that like to be around water; Great Blue Herons and Wood Ducks both came up in the talk. We also saw dragon flies at the pond and talked about how they lay their eggs in the water. We hiked back along the tree lined drive to the manor house and stopped at the sycamore; we noticed the pieces of bark on the ground and agreed that next time they go to the stream they might try the curls of bark as ‘boats.’

I had a break between the two groups. I found a chair in the shade and took pictures of birds at the feeders and nearby trees.

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There were red-winged blackbirds, goldfinches, a red-bellied woodpecker, and a mockingbird. I was hearing the mockingbird long before I managed to see it.

The second hike was a bit longer. We walked along the edge of the forest then went a short way in…listening for birds in several places along the way. We heard birds…but didn’t see any except doves and vultures. There was a lot of other things to see: a deer, a tiger swallowtail, chicory, wineberry, sweet gum balls, lichen, a cicada’s shed.

In both groups we found a few feathers to talk about. I enjoyed the hikes…and I think the campers did too.

Fishmobile – Take 2

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My first experience with the Fishmobile was back in April at an elementary school in Carroll County (posted about it here). I got an email just after I returned from Texas asking if I could help with the Fishmobile’s visit to a nature center near where I life for a weekend event. I still had committed to anything else so I accepted. The day started out well when I checked the milkweed in my front flower bed and found a good-sized Monarch caterpillar!

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The day was not too hot and my ‘shift’ was from 10-12 when the temperature was in the mid-70s. Most of the animals that were there for the school were in the tanks again: horseshoe crabs, Larry the diamond backed terrapin, a blue crab, and a box turtle.

The American eel was silvery and was more active this time. The only thing I missed from last time were sea horses but there were some preserved ones to talk about with the families that came through. In the two hours I was there, almost 200 people came through. Some of the children came through the exhibit several times (after they built up their courage to experience the two touch tanks).

During one lull I stepped off the Fishmobile bus and photographed some bees on the plants just outside. The bees were very active and focused on the flowers…not flying amongst the people coming to the Fishmobile.

After my shift was over, I walked over to the compost demo and filled out the form to get a free compost bin. After the tour yesterday and further education today, I am going to do my own compost. My plan it to put the bin back near the forest and start it off with some shredded paper and veggie/fruit scraps from the kitchen. This time of year taking the watermelon rinds to the compost bin will be a lot easier than lugging them to the curb in a trash bag that might leak! Stay tuned for posts about my compost adventure.

Howard County Composting Facility

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I attended a public tour of the composting facility in the county where I life yesterday morning. There is an expansion of the facility being built now but the pilot program has been going on for several years – lots of ‘lessons learned’ being applied to the expansion that will allow more of the county – hopefully the area where I live – to have curbside compost pickup.

The part of the facility that is currently in operation starts with piles of compostables collected from homes and some farm waste (like horse manure).

 

After being chopped up, it is made into piles. The material is processed for about 45 days in the piles – moved around with bulldozers to get air to all the material so that the decomposers can work. The temperatures in the piles are high enough to kill seeds which is important to the users of compost as a soil enhancer.

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The piles are made over two pipes that pull air from through the pile and then

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Through wood chips and finished compost (the large pipe in the foreground has pipes that push air under the wood chips/finished compost on the other side) – an effective strategy to reduce odors. The only period when odors come through that filter – so far – has been after Christmas when the discarded trees are in the piles; the pine smell is not one that people are likely to complain about so kudos to the design!

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While we were there, there was a pile that was ready to be moved to the area where the compost cures; the work was done with a bulldozer…making multiple trips.

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The piles are covered with tarps during rains; the compost does need water, but the amount must be controlled. Run off from the piles and the area around them is controlled.

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The new facility under construction will have bunkers rather than piles which will increase the capacity per area over the design in use now. The design capacity must be sufficient to handle the large volume of leaves in the fall. In my case – I wouldn’t send most of my leaves to the compost facility since I have forest behind my house that has absorbed the leaves from my yard quite well. If my area is one of the lucky ones to be included in the expanded service, I’ll decide if sending the front yard leaves to composting is easier than raking them to the forest!

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Gleanings of the Week Ending July 7, 2018

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

BBC - Future - How we could survive on an asteroid – Harder than colonizing a planet…but mining asteroids from a colony on the moon or mars might be more feasible. Interesting to think about; it’s not full out science fiction at this point.

Stunning Data From The Bottom of the World: Antarctic Ice Loss Triples - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal - AGU Blogosphere – The melting is mostly from warmer ocean waters melting submerged glaciers that have moved into the ocean.

Take a 3D Tour Through Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West | Smart News | Smithsonian – I always like to see an article a place that I have visited…savor the memory. This post includes the link to the 3dlab site…lots of room to explore in a way that is the next best think to being there.

Illnesses from Mosquitoes and Ticks on the Rise | Berkeley Wellness – In our area Lyme disease (from ticks) is the one we worry about the most but there might be others that are going to become more problematic. Maryland has more mosquitos that usual right now…unpleasant and maybe unhealthy.

Red Meat Allergies Caused by Tick Bites are on the Rise – Aargh! I hadn’t heard of this one before.

Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital | Science | AAAS – A short video and article about structures recently excavated that include skulls of human sacrifice victims as described by Spanish conquistadors.

China’s Plastic Ban Will Flood Us with Trash | Smart News | Smithsonian – Now that China isn’t accepting the plastic we throw in recycling – where is it going? Are our landfills going to be even more massive? Ideally recycling would get better (and done closer to where the material entered the system) rather than worse.

Petrified Forest National Park Becomes World’s Newest International Dark Sky Park – I’ve visited this park several times…and now it’s a dark sky site. It’s a long way from Maryland but maybe we’ll eventually get there for a star party!

Why Europe’s astronauts are learning Chinese – China is taking the steps to be the third big player in space….and Europe is planning to cooperate with them just as it does with the US and Russia.

Caterpillars and Day Lilies

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Since I’ve been home, I’ve started doing some remedial yard work…more on the changes to the flowerbed later. I’m focused on caterpillars and day lilies that were a biproduct of the work. The biggest excitement was a very small monarch caterpillar on the milkweed! I can’t cut it down now. Every morning I look at the plants and I haven’t found the caterpillar again but there are a lot of other insects on the plants. Milkweed is popular with the insect crowd.

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Yesterday there was a different kind of caterpillar on the milkweed. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe some kind of Tiger Moth caterpillar? It isn’t a milkweed tussock moth caterpillar since those are orange and block and white and bristles are shorter and there are more of them.

The day lilies that I thought would be so gorgeous in the front flower bed always make beautiful foliage and then last year the deer ate the buds before many of them could open .  Evidently the buds are deer candy. I’m giving up on day lilies after this year. So - while I was working in the flower bed, I cut all the flower stalks I found and put them in a big vase. The next morning, I took the vase outside and took pictures in the morning light.

I appreciate the opening buds and the spent flowers of the orange lilies. Placing the vase on the deck railing and using the out-of-focus forest as the background worked out well.

I photographed the one pink and white lily from different angles. It was the only non-orange flower in the vase.

At least this way I get to enjoy the flowers one last time rather than getting mad at the deer.

3 Free eBooks – June 2018

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I picked 4 books instead of 3 in June because of the first two were about the same place – New York – and I thought they were interesting history.

Wittemann, Adolph. Select New York. New York: A. Wittemann. 1889. Available from Internet Archive here. This book includes photographs of New York and almost all of them include a tangle of electrical wires…at the beginning of the electrification of the city when there was a lot of chaos and little standardization.

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Wittmann, Adolph. New York: An Album of Photographs. Brooklyn: Wittemann. 1900. Available from Internet Archive here. The photographs have been tinted and there are no wires at all. Were the electrical conduits underground by 1900 or did the publisher manage to take them out of the photographs?

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Lear, Edward. Illustrations of the family of Psittacidae, or parrots: the greater part of them species hitherto unfigured, containing forty-two lithographic plates, drawn from life, and on stone. London, England: E. Lear. 1832. Available from the Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture here. I was surprised to find this book of parrot illustrations…but the same man that wrote the poem ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ I remember from my childhood!

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Wantanabe, Seitei. Seitei kachō gafu v. 2. Okura Mogabe, Toyko, Meije 23. 1890. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here. I enjoyed the Japanese artwork…like the type of nature photography I like to do. I wanted to be in the place seeing a bird walking in a wetland – perhaps it was early morning.

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2018

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The ten little celebrations for June started out like other months:

  • Celebrating the last of the spring field trips and the end of schools. I enjoy hiking with school groups….but am always ready to have a summer break!
  • The Frederick MD garden day was full of garden treasures. I celebrated formal gardens…a children’s’ garden…and most of all a woodland garden.

 

  • My daughter managed a weekend to drive down for a weekend visit. She is closer now that she lives in Pennsylvania rather than Arizona, but we are all so busy that we don’t see each other any more frequently.

Then something unique happened: my mother fell and broke her femur…and I went off to Texas for almost 3 weeks. The rest of the little celebrations were all stem from that event:

  • The surgery to fix the break happened within 24 hours and was success.
  • I managed to get to Texas before she left the hospital – barely.
  • She walked about 100 feet with a walker before she left the hospital….and only spent 2 days at a rehab place before going home.
  • I manage a short walk around Josey Ranch lake while one of my sister was with my parents and saw 4 types of herons in about 30 minutes…two were ‘firsts’ for me: a yellow crowned heron and juvenile green herons. It was my only photography away from my parents’ house and was short…but very satisfying.

 

  • Last but not least – the physical therapy milestones just before my left: my mother walked down a paved alley and across a grassy lawn with her walker….and we’d already gotten a cane to be ready for her next milestone! The she – and the whole family – celebrates every milestone!

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 30, 2018

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

The Mysterious Demise of Africa’s Oldest Trees - Yale E360 – Baobab trees that are over 1000 years old are dying quickly…and there is not yet a definitive explanation.

History and Seaports in Charleston : Image of the Day – I visited Charlestown a few years ago on vacation…this picture from the International Space Station brought back memories and provided a different perspective of the place.

Top 25 Birds of Europe – National Geographic Blog – Last week it was Africa…this week it’s Europe.

New study examines impacts of fracking on water supplies worldwide - GeoSpace - AGU Blogosphere – Maps make it easy to look at complex data in a visual way. My take away from these maps of water supply and shale basin areas is that Texas has a lot of shale in areas that are already under water stress….fresh water is already being consumed unsustainably.

BBC - Future - Why non-smokers are getting lung cancer – I’ve wondered about non-smokers and lung cancer. The numbers are not huge…but they are often diagnosed late and are, therefore, more deadly.

Seventeenth-Century Danish Latrines Analyzed - Archaeology Magazine – Diet and parasites from more than 300 years ago.

Move Over, Monarchs: Another Butterfly Makes a Longer One-Way Migration - Yale E360 – Painted Lady Butterflies from southern Europe migrate across the Mediterranean through the Sahara to tropical Africa!

Discover Landscape Architecture Activity Books – THE DIRT – There are activity books for younger students and then teens/adults. I am reading the adult version and then will try to apply some of the activities when I travel…encourage new appreciation of the as-built landscape architecture of the places I visit.

2018 Lotus And Water Lily Festival At Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens – My husband and I don’t go to the festival but we do go the Kenilworth several times in July…expect lotus and water lily (and dragon fly) posts soon!

Lives before and after Stonehenge: An osteobiographical study of four prehistoric burials recently excavated from the Stonehenge World Heritage Site – Lifestyle rather than ethnicity seems to determine burial practices in this instance.

Josey Ranch Lake – Other Birds

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I’ve posted about the herons and mallards at Josey Ranch Lake earlier this week. There were some other birds at the lake.

The grackles are probably the most numerous birds at the lake. I like to photograph the birds showing their attitude.

The next most numerous birds are pigeons. Most of them were on the roofs of the senior center or library – surveying the lake or grooming.

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A Great Egret was feeding in the shallows near the Great Blue Heron….the lake seems to have enough food to support quite a few birds.

I saw one swan. I wondered if something had happened to the others. In April I saw two and several times in previous years that have been 3 or more.

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Josey Ranch Lake - Mallards

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When I first got to Josey Ranch Lake, I thought I all I would see was Mallard Ducks and grackles! All the ducks I usually see when I visit Texas in the winter had gone north to their nesting grounds. When I looked closer at the Mallards, I realized that the ones that appeared to be napping in the shade were either molting males or juveniles just getting their adult plumage. I decided that they were probably juveniles – maybe the same ones I had seen as ducklings in April.

A pair of males on the lake also looked scruffy – probably juveniles getting their plumage.

Then I saw a female with a large number of mid-sized ducklings on the lake….probably the second group of the season. The lake is a good place for duck families evidently!

Josey Ranch Lake – Blue Herons

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I saw two types of blue herons at Josey Ranch Lake (along with green herons and a yellow crowned night heron…for a total of 4 different kinds of herons): little blue and great blue. Great Blue Herons are birds I see frequently in Maryland and in Texas. They are large beautiful birds…and I enjoy photographing them. There was one at Josey Ranch Lake – standing serene in the lake shallows.

The  Little Blue Heron is not a bird I see in Maryland, so I was thrilled to see one at Josey Ranch Lake. It was the first heron I saw when I arrived for my walk. It was fishing in the shallows near the senior center. The bird looked a little battered – had some feathered missing in its neck – but seemed healthy and finding edible tidbits in the water.

Josey Ranch Lake – Yellow Crowned Night Heron

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Another heron I saw at Josey Ranch Lank was  Yellow Crowned Night Heron. This heron is much larger than the green heron; in the image below the yellow crowned night heron is on the right and the green heron (adult) is on the left (a ball is in the center).

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Both herons were in the fallen reeds looking for breakfast and both found a crayfish. The pictures of the green heron catch were not clear enough to see the crayfish…but the shape and antennae or evident for the night heron’s catch.

This was a bid I had to look up in AllAboutBirds when I got back from my walk. I’d taken enough pictures from various angles to make the identification. It looked like a heron although the head looked more rounded that some of the other herons. The markings give it a different ‘facial expression’ as well – our minds always jump to that thinking, assigning a ‘personality’ to the bird that overlays assumptions made for our species onto the bird.

Josey Ranch Lake – Green Herons

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Josey Ranch Lake is near where my parents live in Carrollton, TX and I try to make a walk around it ever time I visit. This time I’ve been busy with other things but managed to get over one morning – and saw 4 kinds of heron in less than 30 minutes! The most numerous were the Green Herons. They are only slightly larger than a grackle….so hard to distinguish at a distance. I was thrilled when I zoomed in on some fallen reeds at the edge of the lake and spotted one that hunting. Another bird appeared in the standing reeds. One caught something a gobbled it down – not sure whether it was a small fish or crayfish.

But the thrill of the day was few feet way at the edge of large stand of cattails….2 juvenile green herons! They were hunting on the logs and seemingly finding tidbits to eat. Their wings did not appear developed enough to allow then to fly; they still had a lot of down and coloring more like a starling than a green heron. But look at the legs!

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 23, 2018

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Civil War Battlefield ‘Limb Pit’ Reveals Work of Combat Surgeons – History from bones…a different perspective on the Civil War.

Seeing Through the Eyes of Your Camera | The Prairie Ecologist – A little photography tutorial….it’s great to understand your camera well enough to (sometimes) see more than you easily can with your eyes!

Forensic dentistry and how teeth are used to identify a person – Emerging technologies are making it realistic to identify a person from a single tooth.

What Americans Told Us About Online Shopping Says A Lot About Amazon : NPR – Shopping has changed so much….I like the change too.

Carbon Bubble About To Burst, Leaving Trillions In Stranded Assets Behind, Claims New Research | CleanTechnica – A thought provoking article about the inevitable transition from fossil fuels…and the value of these assets.

A new material capable of the adsorption of organic pollutants in water: The organomica C18-Mica-4 eliminates between 70 and 100 percent of these toxic compounds in less than 24 hours -- ScienceDaily – There are a lot of pollutants that the old style water treatment does not remove. I’m glad there is active research on increasing what can be removed from waste (industrial and sewage) water before it is released from the treatment facility.

 2017 set a new record for renewable power, but emissions are still rising — Quartz – I hope we can turn a corner soon – stabilize and then reduce emissions. Otherwise the future is a very different world. Many will not fare very well.

Age-related diseases may be a negative outcome of human evolution – In 1957, evolutionary biologist George Williams proposed a theory: adaptations that made species more fit in the early years of life likely made them more vulnerable to diseases in the post-reproductive years. This article is about some recent work investigating this theory in relation to brain development in humans.

Photography in the National Parks: Adding a Sunburst to your Sunshine – Getting up to photograph sunrise…some ideas to add pizzazz.

Top 25 Birds of Africa – I can’t resist including a ’25 birds’ post in the gleanings for the week.

Butterfly Heads

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I am in Texas and missing my frequent visits to Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy in Maryland. The pictures I took right before I left are something to savor. The theme of my photography inside the conservatory was ‘butterfly heads! The blue morphos have orange and white papillae --- nothing iridescent blue about their heads.

Some butterflies have papillae that are very large. The proboscis is between the papillae and extend for feeding on bananas or flowers.

Sometimes the papillae are damaged. I notice the owls often have broken papillae. The brown and black stripes of the owl eyes are different than other butterfly eyes.

Some butterflies have antennae that seem to glow at the ends.

In the conservatory, butterflies are sometimes resting upside down under leaves. Its always a thrill to notice one in the foliage.

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Some of the larger butterflies feed on multiple flowers in succession – wings almost always in motion. The last day I was at Brookside was sunny enough that the camera was fast enough to freeze the motion.

I tell children that the butterfly’s proboscis is like a straw…and they do seem to handle it like one…although the way they coil it under their head is different from straws we use!

Butterflies feeding on flowers are my favorites, but some prefer bananas (or other rotting fruit). I inevitability decide that all of them are worth trying to photograph.

Familiar Birds in Texas

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Grackles and crows and blue jays….common birds in both Maryland and Texas.

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The surprise for me during a recent walk around my parents’ backyard was a Carolina Wren! There must be a nest somewhere in the yard….maybe the woodpile that is inactive this time of year. When I saw them there were clearly two flitting around the yard. My mother said this was the first year she had seen them. Dallas is close to the western edge of the range map in AllAboutBirds.

They are fun birds to watch…if you can find them on the tree trunk or on the ground rustling through the foliage or on the gutter…staying in one place for a few seconds before flittering away. They aren’t showy birds but have lively personalities.

Chipmunk Hide and Seek

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Last time I was at Brookside Gardens, a butterfly was an effective blind to photograph a chipmunk. There are many chipmunks at Brookside this year (seemingly more than in previous years); they usually do not allow people to get close before scampering off under foliage and further down the path. With the bench between me and the chipmunk, this one seemed oblivious to me. I got several pictures before I made the mistake of taking a step and the chipmunk startled…scampered away…disappeared.

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 16, 2018

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Reading habits in the past | Europeana Blog – When I travel, I tend to do most of my reading on my phone (light weight, easy to carry, and ambient light does not have to be good). It’s a recent development for me. This blog post goes back further in history.

Man against machine: AI is better than dermatologists at diagnosing skin cancer -- ScienceDaily – There are still limitations to the AI but it might be close to a tipping point to begin transitioning into system. It seems like it would be most in demand for screening where there were not highly trained dermatologists available….as long as the imaging technology was not tremendously expensive or hard to use.

BBC - Future - Is it really healthier to live in the countryside? – I thought it would be…but it’s complicated because so many factors contribute to ‘health.’

Mapping Modern Threats to Ancient Chacoan Sites : Image of the Day – Posts about places I’ve visited always get my attention. A study using satellite data and projections for population growth/oil and gas exploration in the area shows that 44 of the 123 known Chaco sites included in the study are threatened by development. Of those, 19 are already protected by the National Park Service.

Paper Art Details Similarities Between Human Microbiome and Coral Reef – Nature inspired art!

Researchers Grow Veggies in Space | The Scientist Magazine® - Progress in a technology required for longer space missions…and then colonies on other planets.

Schoolyard Habitats Provide Resiliency in Houston Independent School District : The National Wildlife Federation Blog – Schools in Maryland have similar projects. I hope the monarchs have shown up in Houston…I haven’t seen any in Maryland yet this year.

US Still Subsidizing Fossil Fuels To Tune Of $27 Billion | CleanTechnica – This post included more detail on what subsidies are…how the US compares to other developed countries.

Thank A Rare Fungus For The Sustainable Solar Cell Of The Future | CleanTechnica – It’s a beautiful color…if it really works, it won’t be ‘rare’ for long. It will be come a commercially grown fungus!

Bright warning colors on poison dart frogs also act as camouflage -- ScienceDaily – Learning a bit more about these little frogs.

Milkweed Buds

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June is the time the milkweeds bloom. In our area the buds on the common milkweed are about ready to open in our area. They are turning from green to pink. There is a fragrance around the plants already.

There are no Monarch caterpillars that yet. I have seen any Monarch butterflies (i.e. no eggs either). Hopefully they will start appearing soon. There are plenty of plants in my yard and other places I’ve been recently. People are planting milkweed for the Monarchs, so I hope we have butterflies show up! Other insects depend on the plant as well but none of the others have the cachet of the Monarch.

There are other kinds of milkweed too. I’m not sure how well the butterflies like them – but they are getting ready to bloom as well. I did notice that some of the leaves looked like something was eating them but didn’t see any in action.

Back to the common milkweed – when they start blooming they should be full of bumble bees and butterflies….a great place to point a camera for insect pictures!