What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: GoldFinch For the introduction to this series, see here. Here is one of the brightest birds that might visit your yard. Goldfinches love sunflower seeds; if you plant sunflowers, they may become regular visitors. In winter the males lose their bright yellow plumage and become a much drabber […]
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What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: A Golden Northern Bumblebee For the introduction to this series, see here. What’s in my backyard? I found this bumblebee enjoying one of our pea flowers. Bumblebees are attracted to pea and tomato flowers, among others. If you have a vegetable garden, try looking for these large gentle
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Meet the Neighbors: Mallard For the introduction to this series, see here. When many people think of ducks, they think of this species. They are common and live everywhere in the US. Unlike many other duck species that nest and raise their ducklings in Canada, mallards nest all over the place. The ducklings hatch out
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Meet the Neighbors: Carder Bee For the introduction to this series, see here. This is a carder bee. These bees “card” wool off of fuzzy plants like lambs’ ears to make a nice soft nest. Humans comb sheep’s wool before making it into things. This is called carding. It cleans and aligns the wool fibers.
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What’s in my Backyard? Backyard Safari: What Visits Sunflowers? For the introduction to this series, see here. Sunflowers are creature magnets! Today I went on a backyard safari. I spent about half an hour watching a clump of seven sunflowers for interesting creatures. In that short amount of time, all the creatures in the pictures
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What’s In My Backyard? Projects: Keeping a Nature Journal For the introduction to this series, see here. Keeping a nature journal is very important if you want to understand the wildlife in your backyard. It can be as simple as writing down what you see in the yard or as complicated as you like it
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What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: Queen Meet Her Majesty the Queen!! She is of course closely related to the Monarch. This big beautiful butterfly lays eggs on milkweed just like the Monarch. If they are so similar, how can you tell the difference? If you look at the butterflies in the pictures, you
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What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: Blinded Sphinx moth This big beautiful moth is called the Blinded Sphinx Moth. Blinded? Does that mean it can’t see? Surprisingly this name has nothing to do with the moth’s eyes. The moth has perfectly functional eyes. Instead, the name refers to the bright blue eyespots on its
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What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: sunflower beetle This brightly colored beetle eats sunflower plants. Its Latin name is Calligrapha Exclamationis. Exclamationis means exclamation. If you look at the side of this beetle, you will see a mark that looks like an exclamation mark! In areas where sunflowers are grown, these handsome beetles can
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What’s In My Backyard? Meet the neighbors: Dainty sulphur For the introduction to this series, see here This tiny, delicate butterfly is in the same family as the white cabbage butterflies that are pests in the garden but these butterflies are not usually pests. Their wingspan is only 2–3.2 cm (0.7 to 1.2 in)! For
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