What interesting creatures live in your garden?

[TheSeedObsesser]

Those round tan things must be termite mounds?

I would think that the giraffes would be more of a problem in an orchard than a garden, when it comes to eating stuff.

 

[Carol Dee]

@sumi your corner of the world is a place I would LOVE to visit. Someday. But as you can see we do not tend to travel far. Still I would love to go on a photo Safari in some exotic locals. One can dream.

 

[Smart Red]

Just for fun, a pic I took on a nearby farm this morning. I sure as heck don't want these guys in my garden. I'd give them a week and there'd be NO garden! LOL (Look on the left, above the tree, is another one.)

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Hey, @sumi, I guess we have more in common than gardening. Here is a photo of my visitor. My crabapple trees are in the background.

 

[sumi]

Hi all, we moved today, bleh, so I'm just doing a quick fly-by and catch up now. I'm so tired you could string me on a clothesline. But we're here, that's the important bit.

@TheSeedObsesser Yes, those are termite mounds in the pic. There are many of them up on that hillside and some are enormous.

@Carol Dee SA has a lot to offer and is definitely worth a visit. Apart from the wildlife (which is amazing) we have some really beautiful places here. And Cape Town is just... incredible. If you put one African place/city on your bucket list, make it Cape Town.

@Smart Red LOL love it!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Here is that caterpillar that I find on dill and sometimes parsley. This one is on dill. I'm pretty sure it makes some type of swallowtail butterfly but I'm not sure exactly which one.

 

[Smart Red]

Not exactly in my garden (yet) but probably closer than I should want it to be, I saw my first wild long-tailed weasel, (short-tailed or least weasel) running on and off the road trying to get to the roadkill only about 2 miles from my property?

I have never seen a weasel around here before. This was a very small (spring squirrel-sized) thing. I hope it wants to stay near the water and doesn't wander any closer to my chickens. It would be a tough varmint to keep out if it was determined.

Nope! No photo. I was driving at the time and my camera was at home.

 

[journey11]

Here is that caterpillar that I find on dill and sometimes parsley. This one is on dill. I'm pretty sure it makes some type of swallowtail butterfly but I'm not sure exactly which one.

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Probably an Eastern Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes).

male

female

They love my dill, anise, parsley and fennel. You can catch them if you have something to put them in (preferably ventilated, like wire or mesh) and continue to feed them fresh sprigs of dill daily until they pupate. We just had one emerge today. It doesn't take long and I bet your granddaughter would love that!

DD7 recently received a nice full-color reference book on butterflies from her Nana. I never realized before how many different swallowtails there are.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Yeah, probably an Eastern Black, since you are east of the Rockies (west of them it's more likely an Anise Swallowtail, Papilio zelicaon. There is a tiny chance it could be an Old World Swallowtail too, Papilio machaon, though those usually only are found much further north, so any of those that show up by you are either really lost or the result of transport (say someone bringing in fennel seedlings with eggs from a nursery up north.

Besides EBS, I've also raised one tiger swalltail, one spicebrush (always like those caterpillars, they look like cartoon snakes!) a few Mourning cloaks, and one or two monarchs. I ALMOST did a few giant and silver skippers as well, but I put them out to pupate too early, and they crawled away.

The carterpillars go through five instars (molts) in thier lifetimes and change appearance DRAMTICALLY after each one. Yours are on instar 5 so they'll probably pupate soon. Assuming you are planning to keep and raise them the rest of the way, provide them some sticks or dowels to do this on (swallowtails are cantilevered pupators (they make a silk girdle and hang at an angle from the side), as opposed to things like monarchs that are danglers.
In a few weeks months the crysalides will open and the adult butterflies will emerge.
One warning, this early in the year the butteflies will probably emerge later this summer and you'll have no problems. However the next brood may be the spring brood, which overwinter as crysalides and then emerge in the spring. A good way to tell is by the color of the chrysalis; green, summer, brown winter. If you DO get a winter, it is important you put it somewhere like your garage or a patio over the winter, NOT inside. The higher temperature of your house will mess up their internal clock, and
you'll wind up with the adult butterflies emerging in the middle of January, when it's too cold for them to survive (I made this mistake a LOT and a lot of my emerged butterflies would up being passed on to members of the entomology department for a trip into the antesthetizing jar (I considered this more merciful than letting them freeze or starve.).

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yes it looks like an Eastern Black. I get some of the adults around here but never knew what they were called. I'd found pictures of the anise caterpillar but I'm not in their range. I'll just leave them where they are and let them eat what they will. All I need from the dill is the flowers and they don't seem to bother those.

 

[sumi]

Some monsters from the compost heap. I wish someone told me how sore these things bite! The chickens enjoyed them though.