I'm joining in the memes hosted by Eileen,  Rambling Woods, St Germain's and Today's Flowers meme.

Look what I found on my parsley plants :-D. These are the caterpillars of Black Swallowtail Butterfly, a really gorgeous butterfly that is found in all over the North America. It is apparently the state butterfly of New Jersey. It constantly flies around in my garden but I never get the chance to take a picture as they are too restless a butterfly; all the time flittering around. A picture of the butterfly is in the top part of my blog -- it's that black butterfly with beautiful designs on its wings. It's the fifth picture in the series, right next to the tomato-cucumber picture.

 

This is called the first instar of the Swallowtail catterpillar. This apparently looks like bird-poop and thus the birds leave them alone



From the first instar, they become these chubby neon-green caterpillars with black lines and orange-spots



When the caterpillar is disturbed, it protrudes out these orange V-shaped Ostemetrium. It's some kind of protection tools for the caterpillar. When feel threatened the ostemetrium puts out some kind of offensive odor. I tickled it, and it put out the ostemetrium. I didn't get any odor. I guess the predators find the smell offensive.

After these photo-shoots, I went out to the garden. I'm growing lots of hot pepper this year along with some sweet and milder ones. So, this is a small harvest of various types of pepper, lemon-cucumber (a very prolific plant), ground-cherries, beans and some greens:





This is Bhut Jolokia or Ghost Pepper. It is apparently one of the hottest pepper on earth; it is 400 times hotter than the hottest Tabasco sauce. And, I'm growing this :-) because I'm crazy :-P



Small bees and wasps on sunflower. Do you know that the size of a sunflower is related to the size of space it gets to grow? I didn't know that. Being a lover of sunflower, I started growing them in every possible space I could find, and found out this truth: given bigger space, the sunflower will have the optimal bloom size. But, if it gets smaller space, the blooms become smaller.



Honey-bee and aphids (the yellow ones) on Swamp Milkweed.



Do you think bees sleep? Or they become too heavy to fly after  a good dinner? Now and then, I find bees clinging still (as if they are sleeping) on flowers; they will remain like that throughout the night and will fly away the next morning.



Bumble-bee sipping nectar from flowers. 

Creatures In My Garden -- Part 2 -- Videos and Photos

I continue with the theme creatures in my garden. In the first post, I posted pictures of the creatures. In this post, I tried to capture their actions in videos. I am not a great video maker; my hands shake too much; also, I don't do any video editing. On top of that all the videos are taken from inside the windows as the creatures will run away if I go out to shoot their actions. So sorry for the poor video qualities.

As I mentioned in my previous post, bears started coming to our yard to feed on the bird-food. So, I had to stop providing birds with food for the last one month. I resumed this week, and who was the first one to come to the feeder? Well, you have to watch the video to get the answer :-) (yep, this is my trick to make you watch my videos).

One has to admire the tenacity and hardworking of the chipmunks. They climb the fences, trees up into the patio; scurry down the length of the patio and jump into the bird-feeder. They then stuff their mouth with sunflower seeds, and rush to their homes doing all the acrobatics of climbing and running and dodging all the birds, squirrels and our dogs. They continue this throughout the day. The number of trips they make from their homes to the bird-feeders and back can easily add up to the distance around the world (okay that's my theory).

I think the squirrel mistook itself as a chipmunk. It sat in the bird-feeder, exactly like the chipmunk, to have its lunch. It was quite a precarious perch for the squirrel as the feeder is about 6 or 7 feet up from the ground. And the ground is nothing but bricks. So, if it falls, it can be quite hurtful.

Then another squirrel whom I will call Dr. Squirrel Einstein realize that there is another bird-feeder from which one can obtain food much easily. Then, finally the birds came. Birds usually do not come to a feeder that is occupied by squirrels. If they come, they sit nearby and wait for squirrels to leave. Birds do not mind chipmunks. But this time, the birds took a long time to come. The birds occupied one of the feeders.

Many people claim that creatures can wreck havoc on gardens as they can destroy flowers, fruits and vegetables. They do eat berries and fruits. But they do not destroy the garden as many people claim. Rather, I find them useful to the garden as they fertilize the garden and eat all the unwanted and destructive bugs.

And, now here is the culprit -- THE BEAR -- for who I have to remove the bird feeders. If you watch the video, you will notice that it did not exhibit any sign of fear. We were in the patio. It was down in the garden. It saw us; stared at us and then leisurely rambled around the garden, taking all its time and without being scared of us, before it left the yard.  That means this bear is not scared of humans and that's a dangerous thing. If it ever comes across a human and attack, the bear will be then shot dead by police. So, for its safety I stopped providing bird-food. Now though I provide the food, but I bring it in for the night. And, I hope it will not return during the day-time as it did in the video.

Now some photos:

The bird in the last two pictures could be that of a common Grackle or a Brewer's Blackbird. Brewer's Blackbird are not supposed to be present here in the North-East. But at the same time, this bird is not of the size of a common Grackle. So, I'm confused about what it is. I have contacted the Cornell Ornithology Lab to find about its identity.

I'm joining in the memes hosted by Eileen,  Rambling Woods, St Germain's and Today's Flowers meme.

Creatures In My Garden -- Part 2 -- Just Some Videos

I continue with the theme creatures in my garden. In the first post, I posted pictures of the creatures. In this post, I tried to capture their actions in videos. I am not a great video maker; my hands shake too much; also, I don't do any video editing. On top of that all the videos are taken from inside the windows as the creatures will run away if I go out to shoot their actions. So sorry for the poor video qualities.

As I mentioned in my previous post, bears started coming to our yard to feed on the bird-food. So, I had to stop providing birds with food for the last one month. I resumed this week, and who was the first one to come to the feeder? Well, you have to watch the video to get the answer :-) (yep, this is my trick to make you watch my videos).

One has to admire the tenacity and hardworking of the chipmunks. They climb the fences, trees up into the patio; scurry down the length of the patio and jump into the bird-feeder. They then stuff their mouth with sunflower seeds, and rush to their homes doing all the acrobatics of climbing and running and dodging all the birds, squirrels and our dogs. They continue this throughout the day. The number of trips they make from their homes to the bird-feeders and back can easily add up to the distance around the world (okay that's my theory).

I think the squirrel mistook itself as a chipmunk. It sat in the bird-feeder, exactly like the chipmunk, to have its lunch. It was quite a precarious perch for the squirrel as the feeder is about 6 or 7 feet up from the ground. And the ground is nothing but bricks. So, if it falls, it can be quite hurtful.

Then another squirrel whom I will call Dr. Squirrel Einstein realize that there is another bird-feeder from which one can obtain food much easily. Then, finally the birds came. Birds usually do not come to a feeder that is occupied by squirrels. If they come, they sit nearby and wait for squirrels to leave. Birds do not mind chipmunks. But this time, the birds took a long time to come. The birds occupied one of the feeders.

Many people claim that creatures can wreck havoc on gardens as they can destroy flowers, fruits and vegetables. They do eat berries and fruits. But they do not destroy the garden as many people claim. Rather, I find them useful to the garden as they fertilize the garden and eat all the unwanted and destructive bugs.

And, now here is the culprit -- THE BEAR -- for who I have to remove the bird feeders. If you watch the video, you will notice that it did not exhibit any sign of fear. We were in the patio. It was down in the garden. It saw us; stared at us and then leisurely rambled around the garden, taking all its time and without being scared of us, before it left the yard.  That means this bear is not scared of humans and that's a dangerous thing. If it ever comes across a human and attack, the bear will be then shot dead by police. So, for its safety I stopped providing bird-food. Now though I provide the food, but I bring it in for the night. And, I hope it will not return during the day-time as it did in the video.

I'm joining in the memes hosted by Eileen,  Rambling Woods, St Germain's and Today's Flowers meme.