Suburban Wildlife

 For the first summer in several years, we had a resident toad. He hung around in the back yard near the water faucet and under the Joe Pye Weed. 

From May until the middle of September, hummingbirds visited our feeders. We had a feeder in both the front and back yards. I made hummingbird nectar myself and changed it every 3 or 4 days. 

We planted milkweed in our front yard. It's an aggressive plant. It looks reasonably attractive as long as baby monarchs don't nibble on it, but why would you plant milkweed if you weren't interested in attracting monarch butterflies?  For the longest time this summer, there was no sign of egg-laying monarchs. Late in August, we saw a few. Then the milkweed began to look raggedy and soon we spotted a caterpillar or two crawling up the walls of the porch. Chrysalises began to appear here and there. Some were in unusual places, such as under this bench.  Phil saw these two emerge from their chrysalises late one chilly summer night. They stayed under the bench like this all night. The next day, when it warmed up a bit, they took off. I hope they made it to Mexico.