Friday, August 8, 2014

Butterflies and Bugs

The neighbor's butterfly bush is again in full bloom (after the harsh winter here, most of the upper branches had died).  The butterflies have returned for my entertainment.  There have been a lot of Skippers flitting around the flowers and I think this is a Fiery Skipper but  not sure as the butterfly book I use only  has a couple of varieties and doesn't show this one this far north.  I have seen lots of these down in NC.  They are quite small -- certainly no bigger than an inch.


It was good to see one of the beautiful Monarchs again this year.

The beaten up Eastern Tiger Swallowtail came for a dip yesterday as well.  He has lost all of his tails at this point!

With all the lovely flowers around, you would think this White Admiral butterfly would land somewhere other than on top of my husband's kayak sitting on our van!!  Hard to get a picture!!

My husband is repotting all our tropical hibiscus into bigger pots and they are all covered with this beetle which we found hard to identify.  Thanks to the nice people on the Entomology FB page, we found out that it was a Green Stinkbug nymph (not adult).  So now to find something that will rid our plants of these!  It is one of the new pest bugs I guess.  Down in NC, the grasshoppers love the hibiscus and we are always getting those off but they are not in the frequency of these stink bugs...

No comments: