At first glance, our backyard resembles nothing like the wild this book suggests. We live in a relatively new development with small yards backed up to each other. There are very few tall trees and very few landscaped yards - thus, not much habitat for wildlife, much to the dismay of my biologist husband.
However, regardless of the appearance of our yard and neighborhood, Adele still loves to attempt to catch anything that flies with her bug net - much to the delight of my biologist husband.
And this summer, with a little better observation by looking at the details of life rather than the overall appearance of our neighborhood (and yard in particular), we found ourselves with a variety of "wildlife" in our yard.
It started in the spring with the turtles. A strange sight indeed, but on several occasions we saw a turtle walking down our street or across our front lawn.
Then came the unusually wet spring/summer, combined with a bit of traveling on our part, to create more of a "jungle" feel by not keeping up with mowing our backyard. Once David began chopping down the massive growth, he found frogs. Adele was thrilled.
Later summer brought a fun surprise - kittens! We had just returned from visiting our family in Spokane, and I started pulling out some of the big lawn toys for the kids from the shed. Lo and behold, in the back of the shed was a litter of 5 teeny kittens. I did some investigating and figured out they had to be less than a week old. Sadly (for us), the little disturbance caused the mama cat to come move her babies over the next few days. But not before we got to hold a couple of them! One was left for a whole day before the mama came and got him, and he howled so loud that even Henry couldn't play outside without roaming the yard meowing! In the end I suppose it was a good thing that the mama cat moved them...because Adele and I would have tried hard to convince David to let us keep one. :)
Finally, the most entertainment of all has come from caterpillars.
Last May, David planted two passion flower plants - one in the backyard and one on the side of the house. He knew is was a host plant and they would attract a certain species of butterfly to lay their eggs on and for the caterpillars to grow. Sure enough, the caterpillars came. And they ate.
Everyone knows the book The Hungry Caterpillar, right? That was happening right before our eyes. The caterpillars were devouring the plant on the side of the house.
Interestingly enough, the passion flower plant in the back of the house seemed to be surviving. Upon closer look, David noticed an ant species that was demonstrating plant-ant mutualism. The plant provided food for the ant - the extra floral nectaries, which are little spots that are on the stem where the plant provides nectar - and the ant was protecting the passion flower plant from insects that would want to eat it. Namely, our caterpillar. Fascinating, right? (I told you, this was big excitement on a daily basis...)
So we watched the caterpillars thrive on the plant on the side of the house, form chrysalises, and emerge as butterflies. The plant in the back remained intact and well protected.
More entertainment occurred when we noticed there was a cool-looking bug called a wheel bug that was eating the caterpillars.
In an attempt to save our passion flower plan on the side of our house, we kept on the lookout for wheel bugs and transferred them to the plant to go after the caterpillars. Adele really got into this and still loves to find wheel bugs around the yard.
Unfortunately, the amount of caterpillars was no match for wheel bugs, and eventually our plant was reduced to a skeleton. And to top it off, the butterflies launched an attack against our passion flower plant in the back of the yard and it appears they are on a mission to devour that plant as well.
Perhaps we need more passion flower plants in the future...
if for nothing else, so that Adele can venture into the wild again next summer.
No comments:
Post a Comment