Monday, August 15, 2011

(A-69) MONARCH WAYSTATIONS AMPLIFY BIODIVERSITY, COUNTER URBAN SPRAWL!

Monarch Waystaion #613 was created from a sterile, chemically-treated lawn. There's still plenty of grass, but wildlife-friendly spaces were planted in the treelawn, in the sideyard bordering the house, and in the backyard bordering the neighbor's fence. Milkweed and indigenous nectaring plants now abound! The insects came, then the butterflies and songbirds. You can counter urban sprawl and the mass destruction of wildlife habitat...one yard at a time. Enjoy the slide show!


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Robert Morton, M.Ed., Ed.S believes urban sprawl can be offset by creating wildlife-friendly spaces in America's 25,000,000 lawns, one yard at a time! Click HERE to learn why. A portion of Ad sale revenues (10%) will be donated to Monarch Watch. Do you have a wildlife-friendly space? Please share it! Contact us on the secure Bpath Mail Form.

Friday, August 12, 2011

(A-68) THE WOMAN WHO RAISES MONARCH BUTTERFLIES

I was so moved by this article that I contacted the Toronto Star and asked the author, columnist Catherine Porter, if I could share it with other Monarch enthusiasts. She agreed, so here it is, an excellent article by Catherine Porter: The woman who raises monarch butterflies in Riverdale, published On Tue Jun 28 2011. It's about Colleen Brzezicki and the photo shows her tending to her Monarch catterpillars and pupae in her Riverdale home.



Colleen Brzezicki stands outside her Riverdale home in her bare feet, flipping over the leaves of her milkweed plants. She is hunting for monarch butterfly eggs.

Eight years ago, she watched in horror as a wasp “carved up” a baby caterpillar on the weed that had blown into her yard. Since then, she’s become a summer monarch keeper. What does that mean? Well, she tends the milkweed now lining her front yard, together with her heirloom tomatoes and zucchini. Milkweed is a monarch’s nursery. It is the only plant the delicate butterflies use for laying their eggs — “They hang off the end of the leaf, swing their abdomen around and up and, boink, stick on an egg,” says Brzezicki — and later the only food source for the hatching caterpillars.

Once she finds the eggs, she shepherds them inside to the sanctuary of her “House of Champions.” You should know Brzezicki is an artist. She didn’t just make any old hutch for the nursing caterpillars. She fashioned a screen box with scrap wood, affixed the spindles of an old chair on top and below, painted them turquoise and added the flourish of two plastic trophies — one a woman’s body, the other a leaf — she’d fished from the side of the road and merged together. So, as the caterpillars climb the screen to the box’s ceiling to begin their metamorphosis, they are mirrored above by Daphne, the Greek nymph who becomes a tree to escapes a lusty god.




















Hanging from the roof today are two thumb-sized chrysalises, the colour of jade. When Brzezicki shines a flashlight onto one, I can make out the lines of a wing folded inside. I always thought caterpillars built cocoons. Not monarchs. Once they anchor their tails to the roof of Brzezicki’s box, they hang down like bats, and then their skin splits open and “they have wild gyrations to make it drop off,” says Brzezicki, 58. “It looks like they’re taking off a sweater.”


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Monarchs are not the only wild creatures Brzezicki tends to. She’s a naturalist in the middle of the city: a baby raccoon howls for its mother in her shed (she found it wet and limping this morning); a family of squirrels sometimes sets up shop in the box she hung up; and a few bees have burrowed into the nest she built. Her backyard feels like a little slice of the country — the milkweeds and fringed loosestrife and butterfly bushes the adult monarchs suck from, all fighting for sun in a verdant tangle. Step outside and you feel your pulse slow.

Brzezicki has spent hours watching with wonder as the monarchs transformed. Blow on the caterpillars and they raise their rear ends. They have gold spots on their green larva shells. Under a magnifying glass, you can see their wings are ridged, like fingerprints.

Reports show the monarch colonies bounced back from last year’s collapse in their winter grounds high in the fir forests of central Mexico. But a dry spring in Texas and a wet one here has butterfly experts concerned. In her banner year, Brzezicki tended to 30 — opening the box outside to watch each flutter away. She normally finds her first eggs in May. This summer, they didn’t appear till mid-June.

Soon, the jade green of their chrysalises will turn transparent, and she’ll see their black bodies and orange wings. Then, the film will break and they’ll emerge in all their glory, pumping their wings up with their abdomen. These two will live for around 30 days, laying as many as 300 eggs each (if they are female), for which Brzezicki will scour barefoot in the mornings.


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Then those children will have children, and those will likely begin the long descent back to Mexico for the winter. If all goes well, their grandchildren will return next spring.

The “House of Champions” might be little, but the perspective it gives is big. We should all have little boxes like this, to remind us of a greater life beyond our webs of concrete and crowded schedules. “It’s restorative,” says Brzezicki of her monarch-tending hobby. “It all sounds so corny — the circle of life — but it’s sacred. I walk into my backyard and look at an insect and think, ‘It’s a bloody miracle.’ ”

Catherine Porter’s column usually appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. She can be reached at
cporter@thestar.ca



Robert Morton, M.Ed., Ed.S believes urban sprawl can be offset by creating wildlife-friendly spaces in America's 25,000,000 lawns, one yard at a time! Click HERE to learn why. A portion of Ad sale revenues will be donated to Monarch Watch. Do you have a wildlife-friendly space? Please share it! Contact us on the secure Bpath Mail Form.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

(A-67) ENTIRE TOWN BECOMING WILDLIFE-FRIENDLY!













Janet Carroll, a member of the Mukilteo, WA has set the goal for the city to become a totally wildlife-friendly zone, one yard at a time. Carroll is a member of the Mukilteo, Washington Wildlife Habitat Project. She reports that since she last wrote about this venture, 27 more homes have been certified as wildlife habitat in Mukilteo. Currently, 110 homes are certified with only 40 more to go before Mukilteo becomes a National Wildlife Federation Community Wildlife Habitat.


Five schools have been certified. Carroll writes about the true reason to create a wildlife-friendly yard: “It is so much fun to watch backyard wildlife, that those of you who do not have wildlife in your yard are missing out.”

Carroll believes this spring in Mukilteo, WA was hard on animals. Birds nested late, but now her feeders empty quickly and the suet is gone in one day. She enjoys the little Douglas tree squirrels that line up to get into their caged sunflower seed feeders. They are fun to watch as they try to figure out how to get into the feeder often trying to bite their way through the wire.

Unfortunately, the “UNWANTED” are attracted to her yard. Just like in my yard, Monarch Waystation No. 613 in NW Ohio, starlings come to my feeders. They drove a pair of Red-bellied woodpeckers to abandon a neat cavity high up in my neighbors oak tree. Carroll was afraid the starling would bring its friends.

She also reports that all the woodpeckers that are around have come to the suet she puts out. The woodpeckers visit with their young: flickers, downy and hairy woodpeckers and pileated woodpeckers.

Joining in at the suet to feed their food-begging young are the black-capped and chestnut backed chickadees, nuthatches and crows. Carroll describes the crows that come as "insatiable." Despite beaks filled to overflowing with suet, the crows keep trying to pick up more. Then they take the mouthful over to the birdbath to wash it off and half of it ends up in the water.

Band-tailed pigeons descend onto her feeders every day and feed until the seeds are gone. About 16 pigeons hang out in her trees. Her favorite visitor is the Black-headed grosbeak. Two pair come to her feeders and she is entertained by their beauty.

She was surprised to see a male western tanager spend a short time in her wildlife-friendly yard. She was amazed by its red head, black wings and bright yellow body.

Carroll said she was “scooped” at her feeder by a friend who had evening grosbeaks and red crossbills in addition to her long list of other feeder visiting birds. Her friend diligently records her bird visitors and reports her findings to Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology as a citizen scientist.

Carroll hopes that those with certified backyards enjoy the animals as much as she does, and those Mukilteoians whose yards aren’t yet certified send in their certification forms. Yes, she offers certification forms on the Website. Once a resident of Mukilte, WA is certified, they get a year’s membership to National Wildlife Federation and a subscription to their informative magazine, a backyard wildlife sign from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and a newsletter from the Woodland Park Zoo.


Wow! What a great job the Mukilteo Wildlife Habitat Team is doing! A community-wide effort!


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Robert Morton, M.Ed., Ed.S believes urban sprawl can be offset by creating wildlife-friendly spaces in America's 25,000,000 lawns, one yard at a time! Click HERE to learn why. A portion of Ad sale revenues will be donated to Monarch Watch. Do you have a wildlife-friendly space? Please share it! Contact us on the secure Bpath Mail Form.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

(A-66) MONARCH WAYSTATION NO. 613 BUTTERFLY LARVA EATS OWN EGG


















I'm turning into a kid again! There's been a big upswing in Monarchs spotted here in NW Ohio at Waystation No. 613. As I look out my window, there is a steady flow of female Monarchs laying eggs in the Swamp and Common Milkweed in the side and back yards. Same around Sandusky County, where my hometown of Fremont lies. I just witnessed a collecte egg hatch on my front porch and took some pics. The photo sequence shows the larva initially walking away from the egg it just emerged from, then it turns around and begins eating the shell. I love it! My goal is to collect eggs from my Waystation No. 613, keeps stats on success rates, and release the adult Monarch butterflies, after checking them for OE virus and tagging them.




What a great activity to involve your children, nephew, and nieces in! It can be done in your own yard and helps battle nature deficit disorder! At the top are great nature kits for children. Enjoy the pics.




This is why I separate the newborn larva from the other eggs. They'll eat 'em up!!

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Robert Morton, M.Ed., Ed.S believes urban sprawl can be offset by creating wildlife-friendly spaces in America's 25,000,000 lawns, one yard at a time! Click HERE to learn why. A portion of Ad sale revenues will be donated to Monarch Watch. Do you have a wildlife-friendly space? Please share it! Contact us on the secure Bpath Mail Form.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

(A-65) MONARCH BUTTERFLY POPULATION DECREASE SIGNIFICANT

I received a Monarch Population Update from Jim Lovett of MONARCH-WATCH. He pretty well summed up the status of the Monarch butterfly population trend. And, it demonstrates another reason why creating wildlife-friendly spaces in America's 25,000,000 household yards is a good idea!




According to Lovett, the overwintering population in Mexico increased each year from 1994 to 1996, only to crash inexplicably in 1997. He states the ups and downs in overwintering numbers - but the population trend has been mostly "downs" since 2003. In fact, the population has been below the long-term average for the last seven years. The downward trend is now statistically significant (Brower, et al. 2011) and it is clear that we have entered a new era of monarch numbers.



Lovett states, "The great migrations of the 90s are a thing of the past. In the future, we can expect overwintering populations in Mexico of 2-6 hectares. The main reason for the decline is loss of habitat. Monarch habitat has been reduced by at least 140 million acres in the last 10 years - about a fifth of the total breeding area available to monarchs has been lost. At least 100 million acres of habitat has been lost due to the adoption of herbicide resistant corn and soybeans."


This is why I firmly believe in creating wildlife-friendly spaces in America's 25,000,000 yards, not only for human enjoyment, but for the survival of the Monarch butterfly and hundreds of other species of insects, birds, butterflies, amphibians, mammals, etc. Just if a mere 1% of America's lawn owners decided to plant milkweed plants and create a beautiful buttefly garden in their yard, and produced 80 Monarch adult butterflies (like I did)...that would create 20,000,000 Monarch butterflies each year!

Lovett predicts a low year for monarchs, perhaps not as low as 2009 (1.92 hectares) or 2004 (2.19 hectares) but close to those numbers. He said the migration in New England will be particularly low and Cape May's will be low as well. The central region (Ontario, MI, OH, IN, IL) will see a modest migration and could produce more monarchs than the area defined by the eastern Dakotas, MN, WI, and IA.

See also:
Monarch Butterfly Population: In decline or holding its own? Take the Poll
Monarch Population Overwintering in Mexico Remains Low
Monarch Butterflies Cross Over Appalachians From West To Colonize East Coast

Robert Morton, M.Ed., Ed.S believes urban sprawl can be offset by creating wildlife-friendly spaces in America's 25,000,000 lawns, one yard at a time! Click HERE to learn why. A portion of Ad sale revenues will be donated to Monarch Watch. Do you have a wildlife-friendly space? Please share it! Contact us on the secure Bpath Mail Form.