Nature study can happen at any time, all around us! On our way out this afternoon, one of our neighbours showed us a butterfly. We thought it looked injured at first, because its wings looked bent and it had trouble flying, but now we think it must just have emerged from its chrysalis. When we came back home, we found the same butterfly with very strong and straight wings, as you can see in the very last photo of this post.
We have some dirt hills near our house, unbuilt lots, where the kids like to ride their bikes. I like to look at all the wildflowers and take photos. Orion always comes along too, which makes my photo-taking a little tricky, but I am getting better at it.
When we got to the hills, Adrienne noticed these litlle toads in a puddle of mud. It was right in their bike path, so they decided to move them a little bit to the other side of the mud puddle. They are so tiny!
You might have to click on this photo to be able to see the toad. It is almost exactly in the centre of the photo, on the far side of the mud "river"!
Bumble bees were busy this afternoon on the thistle:
and so were honey bees:
Here is a shot of the dirt hills we like to go to, hopefully they won't build houses on this spot any time soon:
Here is the Black Swallowtail butterfly, ready to fly away. This was about 40 minutes after we first saw it, its wings were much stronger:
That butterfly is exquisite!
ReplyDeleteI was saving some pictures up to post about insects also. We had a butterfly come out of the chrysalis last year and the wings didn't unfold properly. It got stuck to the bottom of the jar. We had to let it go like that even though it couldn't fly. It looks like that is what happened to the one you found.
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