Yesterday I used my very sophisticated photograph taking technique to try and get some butterfly shots. I named it "stand (or sit) by the lantana and wait for something to land" technique, and it works like a charm. Okay it can be uncomfortable when the temps are in the 90s but yesterday I sat partially under the gazebo and watched my "accidental" flower bed where the largest lantana is planted. I call it the "accidental" bed due to the way it is planted. Every spring I turn over the soil, remove the grass and weeds, trim back the lantana (it is hardy here) and then generously scatter a collection of seeds on the soil. The seeds range from those I had collected the year before from things such as Zinnia, Sunflowers, Mexican Sunflowers, and Marigolds. I also include lots of 10 for a $1.00 packets of wildflower and cutflower mix seeds that I pick up from the dollar store. Then, other than a cursory weeding every now and again to keep the grass at bay I leave it alone and wait to see what has "accidentally" sprouted. This year the majority of the plants are Zinnia, Mexican sunflower and Lantana, which to my delight are those very flowers beloved of butterflies and other pollinators. So I sat and waited and watched. As I watched I noticed that this bed, which is a circle no more that 4 feet in diameter contained its own little universe right there in my garden. To begin with there were of course butterflies. Here is a Silver Spotted Skipper, which are the most gregarious of butterflies, they love an audience and have virtually no fear of humans, particularly this human.
Here is a Palamedes Swallowtail
As I waited for the next butterfly to land I noticed the leaves of one weed (missed at the last weeding) moving in a strange way, all of a sudden I saw this little face peering over a leaf at me
He watched me as I watched him and then eventually he climbed a bit further up the stalk and promptly fell asleep, I swear I could almost hear him snoring, so much for being afraid of the big threatening human. In another "That leaf is not moving normally" moment a baby lizard (to be technically correct a baby anole) began stalking his way through the leaves and blades of grass. I am not sure if you have ever watched a baby lizard hunt, it is a bit like watching an elephant tap dance, both amusing and alarming. While the baby lizard knows that it has to stealthily creep up on its prey, and it does just that, its motions almost fluid as it creeps, in its excitement the baby lizard does not realize that its tail is thrashing around behind it like a snake on steroids, thereby warning anything that the baby lizard happens to be stalking. The baby lizard is walking the walk, being stealthy and smooth whereas its tail is virtually screaming at the baby lizards potential prey "LOOK OUT YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE EATEN" it is a wonder that the baby lizard ever grows up to be an adult lizard but obviously they do, so I am assuming that they just get lucky sometimes, probably by using their own version of my technique "sit on a nectar rich plant and wait for something to land". I particularly like this shot as the baby lizard is precariously perched on a blade of grass, giving you some sense of scale as to how small he is.
I noticed that a couple of yellow and black garden spiders had spun their webs in the bed, obviously trying to take advantage of the potential glut of easy prey, one of them had a recent catch in its web, the other one sat there patiently waiting...
A grasshopper was casually eating a lantana flower while I watched, which should have made me mad but it didn't, knowing that, more than likely, the offending grasshopper had the potential of becoming spider or lizard food in the near future so I let it munch on the lantana and plotted its demise....
There were a great deal of tiny, fuzzy, white caterpillars patrolling the plants, I am not sure what they are, unless of course they are the baby versions of the "golden bear" caterpilllars, still they were fun to watch.
Other than that there were several other things going on that I did not get a shot of, a small brown spider began building his night time web at about four o'clock, making the ever decreasing circles of the web as I watched. The Hummingbird stopped by to drink some nectar from the zinnia and mexican sunflowers but you know that in my excitement I missed the shot. In fact this particular female hummingbird hovered right in front of my face and looked at me, as if to say "what are you doing sat there?" Dragonflies landed on various plants at the time and occasionally took to flight to grab a mosquito that was attempting to land on me, then they would land and devour the mosquito. I am sure that I missed alot of things that were going on in that tiny universe, but my point is this. If that amount of life can go on in a flower bed no bigger that four feet in diameter then can you imagine what is going on in my other, much larger flower beds, they must be teeming with life. So when you look out of your window and admire your sterile, lifeless lawn think about that, dig up that nasty, useless grass and plant a flower bed, mother nature will thank you for it.
