12 July 2009

Milkweed menagerie

At the risk of starting to become a milkweed bore, I offer up some further images of the lives that the common milkweed plants are supporting. Of course there are several Monarch caterpillars (two visible in this picture):


But beyond the very noticeable (and presumably, therefore, highly unsavoury) caterpillars are other creatures, too. I loved the brilliant colours of this tiny fly (and have given up trying to identify it!):


There are two patches of milkweed plants in the hayfield, and the flowers of those in the second patch are slightly darker pink than those in the first group I photographed. There was a small yellowish spider lovingly dealing with its ant prey when I first looked at this plant. The spider didn't like the attention and sidled off (as if to dissociate itself from the dead ant) when I tried to snap it.


On another plant in this group was this rather fed-up-looking frog. I think it's a Gray Tree Frog, simply because it looks less like any of the other nine Ontario frogs than the pictures I've seen of that one. But gray (or even grey) isn't a colour I'd use to describe this beastie. Duck egg blue, perhaps?


On the way back from this trip I spotted a Monarch butterfly, at last:

5 comments:

Linda said...

It sure does look like a gray tree frog. We had one a couple of years ago that thought our umbrella stand was a wanna be tree. From some research I found out they can be green or light brown. Have a look at the tree frog we found.

Heather said...

I think that frog is darling all curled up for his afternoon nap. Very pretty pictures!

Amy said...

I love the photos and the variety of wildlife you've got!

Amanda said...

Linda - that's funny, as we had a tree frog near our house in July 2007 too, which I blogged about too! But that one was definitely grey...

Perovskia said...

What fabulous pictures. Thanks for those!