Happy Halloween

My Yard ~ Great day in the Gardens

Painted Lady Butterfly

Today's unbelievable 78 degrees with sunshine and light winds brought out 15 different species of butterflies.  There are Monarch and Black Swallowtail caterpillars still munching away on their host plants.  The Long-tailed Skipper continues which is exciting but even better were the 2 Painted Lady butterflies that were in the yard.  This butterfly has been rare in the tri-county area with only 11 seen so far this season.  My two Painted Ladies make numbers 12 and 13 the the counties.

Painted Lady Butterfly

Long-tailed Skipper

Fiery Skipper

Red Admiral Butterfly

Variegated Fritillary 

New Yard Butterfly # 43 ~ Checkered White Butterfly

Butterfly numbers and species have been good the past month with many days of sunshine and warmth but soon that will all change as we go into November and colder weather. So today was exciting when a new butterfly was found nectaring on zinnia's in the yard in the afternoon. Even more exciting was finding out it's very rare in Cape May County being seen only once in the last 18 years.  It is more commonly seen on other counties in NJ.  My yard had a total of 12 species.  Also exciting was another fresh Long-tailed Skipper in the yard.  For the year we've had 33 species for this season.

Donation quilt

One of my fellows Sunshine Quilters posted a picture of a quilt she made that I really loved so I copied her work and made my own top.  I love how it turned out and plan to make several more like this one.  Donation top #30 for 2016.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Eastern Towhee in the Yard

Donation Quilts

Since returning from my Western trip I haven't had much time to do any piecing but have managed to pull out 4 kits and sew them together.  Yard work and butterflies are taking up lots of time.  These are quilts #26 to #29.  Now to get them quilted sometime soon.

My Yard ~ Cape May Monarch Monitoring Project

For about the past 2 weeks Roger & Judy H have been tagging Monarch Butterflies in our yard. Today there was a definite increase in Monarchs. While I was outside getting pictures f the butterflies Roger stopped by.  He was able to tag 25 Monarchs in a very short period of time ~ about one every 2-3 minutes.  Then he was out of tags for this year.   So total tagged here in the yard was 49 Monarch butterflies.  Today was the highest number for this year with 32 monarchs counted.  We still have some caterpillars on both Tropical and Swamp milkweed.  I counted 20 chrysalis that I could see and I am sure there are lots more hidden in the gardens.  We also have been having Monarchs enclose almost every day now.  Time for them to move south to Mexico for the winter.

Monarch chrysalis overhang steps

Enclosed Monarch pumping up wings

Monarch tagged in our yard

Villas, NJ ~ Cox Hall Creek WMA ~ Butterflies Walk

Common Buckeye Butterfly - Rosa Form

Ocola Skipper

Pearl Crescent Butterfly

Red-banded Hairstreak

Black Swallowtail Butterfly

Villas, NJ ~ Cox Hall Creek WMA ~ Butterflies

Red-spotted Purple Butterfly

Red-spotted Purple Butterfly

Orange Sulphur Butterflies mating

Sachems

Cape May Point ~ Triangle Garden

Rare to see a Painted Lady Butterfly this season in NJ.  This is only the 8th sighting a a Painted Lady Butterfly and my first sighting of one in 2016.

Painted Lady Butterfly

My yard ~ More Butterflies & a Hummingbird

Ruby-throated Hummingbird still hanging around

Black Swallowtail

American Lady Butterfly

Horace's Duskywing

My yard ~ More Butterflies

Continuing Long-tailed Skipper 

Long-tailed Skipper,

Ratty Monarch but still flying

Monarch Caterpillars & Chrysalis

Ocola Skipper

Variegated Fritillary

Cape May Point ~ Downy Woodpeckers

This Downy woodpecker was being very industrious digging out a hole in the tree.  I watched him a while before taking pictures.  Last picture he was checking out the click of my camera before flying away for a while.

Cape May ~ Warblers hanging out

Black-throated Blue

Palm Warbler

Blackpoll Warbler

Cox Hall Creek WMA

Sharpie takes Catbird