First Butterfly

Today the first of the swallowtails emerged from its pupa in our butterfly house:

We set him free in the back yard this afternoon. He fluttered across the lawn and visited two rosebushes before leaving the yard for the big world beyond. You can see one other pupa on the back wall in the photo. We still have plenty of big fat caterpillars devouring dill and parsley and pooping at an astonishing rate. (I had never really considered the scatological implications of keeping the Very Hungry Caterpillar in a small enclosed space!)

By the way, we ended up building a very different butterfly house from the one pictured in my previous post. This one is made from a cardboard box, with pieces of fiberglass screen taped into place over the windows. (The instructions can be found in Nature Smart by Gwen Diehn.)

One thing that I haven't been doing that I need to start doing is lining the bottom with paper towels so that the poop (frass) doesn't build up, creating a moldy environment. I keep their greens in a small vase, narrow necked to prevent any caterpillars falling into the water. A second vase is handy for replenishing the dill/parsley every few days. I take out the old vase full of greens, caterpillars and all and set it on the kitchen counter. I prepare a fresh bouquet in the second vase, then I carefully transfer any stems with caterpillars on them to the new food supply. (It's important to move the caterpillars by cutting off the stem or leaf they are standing on and carrying that. Pulling them off the branch with your fingers can tear off their prolegs, the false legs at the back of the caterpillar's body used for gripping and climbing.) Then the old vase is washed out and ready for the next feeding.

Black Swallowtail Caterpillars

For just ages I have been wanting to raise butterflies with the kids, but I haven't screwed myself up to order one of those kits with the caterpillars. It just seemed like kind of a big commitment, requiring a chunk of time and attention (and money). It also seemed a bit ridiculous to spend $30 for bug larvae that can be found crawling all over the green earth. So I've just kind of waited around for God to grace us with some caterpillars...and today He did.

The kids all came running in from the garden shouting ,"Mom! Mom! Caterpillars!" And there on our overgrown and bolting dill plant were two very fat black, orange, and white caterpillars. Upon closer inspection I found a third smaller one. We cut off the dill stalks with the caterpillars and placed them in a Ball jar with a coffee filter to cover it. Out came the nature notebooks, followed by about a half hour of drawing and writing about the caterpillars. They were promptly named: Bippy, Snippy, and Nippy.

I've just been online trying to find out what kind of caterpillar we've got. At first glance I thought they looked like Monarchs, but Monarchs only lay their eggs on milkweed, not dill. Also, ours have orange spots, not just stripes. Then I found this picture on What's That Bug:


Apparently they are Black Swallowtail caterpillars, which makes sense, since I have seen the butterflies in our yard. They feed on members of the carrot family: carrots, parsley, fennel, Queen Anne's Lace...and dill.

So tonight we are constructing something like this:


(Ideal, since we just replaced the screen to the back door and had a scrap. The top and bottom are round cake pans.)

Here are the most helpful links I found on raising caterpillars:

Butterfly School
Science News for Kids: Raising Caterpillars
Bug Guide: Black Swallowtails
Bug Guide: Raising Caterpillars

A Bad Year For Baby Birds

The baby birds in our yard have been having a tough time surviving all around. Observing them, I wonder if it has just been an unusual year, or if nature is just this harsh all the time. There were three eggs in the robins' nest early in the spring; only two hatched. We saw the two leave the nest -- but found one dead a couple of weeks later under the pine trees on the north side of our house.

At the same time, a European starling had a nest in a hole in the sinnets of our house; to enter her home, she would perch on the electric wire running to the house, then dive down and maneuver straight up into the hole. Starlings are a nuisance bird, non-native invaders, unprotected by the law. This one had raised one brood early in the spring at the same time as the robins. I don't think any survived, since we found two near-fledglings dead on the ground under her hole, and never saw any others leave the nest. She is raising a second brood now. Two days ago, the children came running in from the back yard in a panic, shouting, "Mom! Mom! A baby bird has fallen out of the nest!" Dubious after the last batch of baby starlings, already dead when we found them on the ground, I went to have a look.

This was no near fledgling like the last ones. A tiny naked nestling with a wobbly head and a great yellow beak, lay curled on the ground, large read ants crawling on his pink skin. It seemed impossible that he had survived the fall of nearly nine feet. I picked him up. He fit neatly in the cup of my hand. I had never held a bird so small.

We carried him inside, brushed the ants off with a makeup brush, and wrapped him in a wash cloth. An internet search produced instructions on what to do. Put him back in the nest? I went back outside and studied the hole. I couldn't reach it, not even standing on the air-conditioning unit, and even if I could have, looking inside I could see that I would have to reach quite a ways into the hole up and over the joists...I couldn't even see where the nest was.

The little starling struggled in my hand. With immense effort, he hoisted his tiny naked chicken body up on his little feet, raised his huge, wobbly head...and then his yellow mouth bloomed open, and everything that is mommy within me melted into a mush of pity and admiration.

No, returning him to the nest was quite impossible, so we did the next best thing: put him in a cottage cheese container, lined with his washcloth, high up on top of the electric meter (the nearest the hole we could get him). I lashed it to the meter with yarn...the wind here blows ferociously most of the time.

We watched throught the day to see if the mother would find the makeshift nest and feed him. She came and went a few times. We saw the baby's little head peep up out of the container a few times, yellow mouth open wide, then flop back down. But she never went to him.

Evening came, and I considered taking him inside for the night. I was worried that he would get too cold. No, I thought. If we keep messing with him, that lessens his chances of being fed by his mother. He's survived longer than he would have had we left him to the ants. He has a chance. Leave him be.

But in the morning he was dead, motionless in the washcloth.

The Big Green Lawn

I am not by nature one of those individuals who aspire to a pristine monoculture carpet of green grass in front of (or behind) my house. I love dandelions; they are fun, pretty, and marvelously nutritious -- even medicinal. I think Hare and the Big Green Lawn is a wonderful book. I like to keep a chunk of backyard habitat and a vegetable garden, because I have this crazy notion that land is meant to produce food for people and animals. The only real use I have for expanses of cultivated grass is as a place for children to run around.

However, the house we live in was vacant for two years before we moved in. It hasn't exactly reverted to prairie like Hare's lawn; it's weedy in parts, and bare in parts, and so thatched it's almost dead in other parts. It is neither wild nor cultivated...it's just... scruffy.

We could have a lawn service come in and do the job...but I have this thing against putting chemicals on the place where my children play and my salad grows. No, it must be an organic lawn (more here and here). Crunch crunch. And so the restoration of the Big Green Lawn has become my personal quest, nay, battle...

My dear dedicated husband so loves his hippie wife that he rented the seed thingy from the hardware store and reseeded the whole mess. He has also assured me that he will rent the de-thatcher and the aerator in the fall and do that job as well.

Meanwhile, I am obsessed, anxiously nursing my tiny seedlings of blue fescue and waging a one-woman war on the weeds, following the tractor sprinkler day after day and filing ten-gallon bucket after ten-gallon bucket with anything that isn't grass -- but leaving the dandelions, of course.

On Robins and Teenagers

I haven't posted about "our" baby robins for awhile...about two weeks ago, I lifted the kids up to peep inside the nest -- and one of the now-mostly-feathered babies jumped out! Needless to say we were a bit alarmed since they obviously weren't the least bit able to fly, and tried to catch the little fellow to return him to the nest. But he scurried away under the bushes and we lost him. So we peeked into the nest again -- and the other baby jumped out! We managed to catch that one, but when we returned him to the nest, he promptly jumped out again.

At last we went indoors and searched for information on baby robins. It turns out that robin fledglings leave the nest about two weeks before their flight feathers are fully developed. The mother and father follow them around bringing them food and water on the ground until their flight feathers grow in and they can fend for themselves. My husband's comment: "Hmmm... sounds like college."

Sure enough, Mr. & Mrs. Robin are still to be seen hopping about our yard watching over their fledglings. Two days ago, we spied one of the babies hiding on a low branch of one of the pine trees on the north side of our house. His red breast feathers were growing in and he looked much more like an adult robin, though he could still only flutter to the lower branches of the tree. (Photos coming soon!)

Some time ago I read about a cross-cultural study (I think sponsored by the UN?) which compared the ages at which young people reached "functional adulthood", defined by the study as being intellectually and emotionally prepared to assume the responsibilities of adulthood. What was interesting was that in industrialized nations the age is getting higher and higher, while it remains somewhere in the mid-teens in the rest of the world. I was thinking about this topic last night, and thinking I'd write something about it, and today I find it popping up all over the homeschool blogosphere. I won't reiterate what others have said better than I , here and here ... and be sure to follow Principled Discovery's link to Susan Wise Bauer's blog on allowing high schoolers to specialize.

I realize my children are only 7, 6, and 2, but what happens now and in the next few years must get them from here to there. My goals for my children in high school:
Deeper faith formation
Preparation for married life
A specialized area of interest and an idea of what they want to do in life
Organizational skills, the ability to manage time, and to balance life (work, study, prayer, service, recreation, rest)
Lots more household responsibilities -- a teen should be able to run the household in a basic way, including the kitchen, the garden, maintaining the car, caring for children, etc.
Vocational training and/or working part-time at a real job in an area of interest, or possibly starting and operating a small business if that is their inclination
Specific training and practical experiences in finances and managing money
Basic high school academic diploma requirements, keeping in mind specific goals (college or other)
Higher levels of critical thinking in all areas

Baby robins!!!

The baby robins have hatched at last. Mr. & Mrs. Robin are very diligent in protecting them -- they will let us sneak a peek but begin to squawk and swoop at us if we take too long about it. They had to endure a pretty rough storm this week with high winds and hail -- Mrs. Robin sat on her babies throughout. I am amazed at these tough little birds.