JCC [Animals] What wildlife visited my yard today

Six hours later...

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These guys are so screwed. There's 3 full plants left, should last them another day.

 

they'll figure something out.

 

Yeah, it's Swan Plant (another plant with toxic milky sap). Commonly the populations like that eat all available food before they're ready to pupate. Then they eventually do pupate but aren't developed fully and make mutant deformed butterflies or chrysalis' that never hatch and rot.

At a stretch you can use pumpkin to feed them if they eat all the Swan Plants, but it's not as good as getting more plants in.

And it pays to thin the caterpillars out when they're small so as you don't get, well, what Sam posted.


Also, if you bring a chrysalis inside due to its sibling eating the leaf it's attached to, you can use a clothes peg to attach it to a stick - just put a cloth underneath, as there's a blob of liquid that comes out when the butterflies hatch that stains.

 

That's good to know, thanks japes.

Also, most chrysalises attached themselves to the stems causing a big dent in the side of the pod. I take it that's not healthy.

 

If the dent is done early on while they're still bright green, they're usually fine.

I'd suggest you buy a butternut pumpkin asap and slice it into about 8ths and transfer a few over to the slices.

 

I think I got there just in the nick of time. All the leaves have been stripped away and half of them were all over the patio looking for greener pastures. I put down some strips of butternut pumpkin and it only took a moment before they were chomping into it. There's a few that are still trying to climb back up the stalks, but I've done my bit, now nature can go back to what it does.

 

I'm happy to report all but a few caterpillars survived and flew away, and now all the swan plants have regrown all their leaves and they're once again covered in caterpillars (not so many this time thankfully). The circle of life.

 

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Neat thing happened today on my way out of the office. Saw what looked like a big bug, but it was on it's back panting. It was a hummingbird that had hit the window and was pretty badly dazed. Picked him up and sat with him in my car until he got his bearings. He got pretty comfy on my chest, and seemed to like the shiny necklace! After about twenty minutes took him back to the courtyard and he finally let go and flew.

 

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OK so technically not my yard, but for miles the coast north of Kaikoura was littered with seals, I've never seen so many at once. This was about as close as I wanted to get, they seemed to be eyeing me up suspiciously.

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It may be the wrong time of year right now, but there's a stream there, and if you go for a 10 minute walk from the road at the Ohau stream you come to a pool under a waterfall where dozens and dozens of seal pups frolic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPsjKa6eL0U

 

Awesome. We were just passing through on the way down to ChCh and it was cold and wet, so didn't do much exploring.

 

So, in the 4 months we've lived at our new place, we've found three dead birds in our backyard. Two were on the ground and the other was in the pool yesterday. It happens about every three weeks or so. I can't figure out what the heck would be attacking them. I don't think it would be a cat. We have a hawk around here but I'm wondering if crows are that aggressive. The boys are fascinated by the little corpses but I'm getting kind of tired of having to dispose of them all the time.

 

this one visited my house a couple of weeks ago

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and we found a hedgehog in the ginnel as well!

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A turkey ran through my backyard last evening...

 

I WANT A HEDGEHOG SO BAD. Stupid California...


I should have taken a photo of it, and work totally counts as my backyard, but FYI: Sleeping Giant Pacific Octopus? CUTEST THING EVER.

 

I walked out of the house early yesterday morning to find three coyotes standing on the front lawn. I waved "Hi" but they ran off.

 

Large centipede walking across a rock in our courtyard.

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Went for a stroll with my friends and we found this very annoyed toad:

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