The Constancy of Butterflies

I am going on my 11^th month in Texas, well technically I did skip a month when I went to ME this summer, but for the months I have been here I can say one constant thing has been the company of butterflies.   I was shocked to find them skittering over the ground when I arrived in January.

 Dainty Sulphurs, all along a rocky path that seemed to have little in the way of food items, but there they were.  They are said to feed on dogweeds and sneezeweeds and, in that I have no idea what those plants look like, they may very well be along my daily path around the neighborhood.  They are in the Aster family so maybe some teeny tiny starry flower is right by my feet and I don’t see it.  These tiny butterflies seem to be here year round with an ebb and flow that perhaps represents a time when they are in their pupa phase.  I read somewhere that they zip through metamorphosis, which seems believable in that they are only about 1” wide.  How long can it take to grow to that size?

Spring featured Acacia trees full of Red Admiral butterflies, ones that would congregate in great numbers on plates of overripe bananas.  I felt I had landed in a tropical rain forest with them flitting everywhere.   The omnipresent Pipevine Swallowtail followed them in the summer, and again as often as I had looked up the pipevine plant I still couldn’t find it in my lawn.

 Try to tell that to the females that were forever bending their abdomen over some random leaf in the grass apparently laying eggs.  The spiky red caterpillars followed and adult swallowtails were a daily sight through summer and into fall so I guess they knew what they were doing.   

In late summer, an explosion of Blue Mist flowers around the gazebo drew in throngs of Queen butterflies, a bright orange butterfly with a black border.  Smaller and in a different family that the milkweed-loving Monarch, they still seem to lead a lot of people into thinking they are seeing Monarchs.  In my yard there were far more Queens than Monarchs but when the Monarchs did show up they seemed to love these flowers too.  So from early morning to dusk butterflies in a blue mist stupor could entertain you.  Drinking, then taking a lap or two, then coming back to dive in again. There must have been 20 at a time at the height of it and some are still floating about, now trying to eek a living out of the few flowers that remain.

Then came an “almost killing frost”.   The day after, as I was doing a hike with some 5^th graders we kept coming across the still forms of swallowtails that hadn‘t been swallowed, yummy abdomen still intact so, no “crime scene” here, just the sad luck of not finding cover on a chilly night.  So I thought 11 months would be the amount of time butterflies would be present in my little stretch of Texas.

When this morning, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but brand new Red Admirals fresh from the pupa to here!  So the flitting game continues, the bananas are out again and an afternoon walk showed all the hardies that had survived this first round of cold.  Fritillaries, Clouded Sulphurs even the really large one called, inventively, the Large Orange Sulphur, which is completely yellow by the way, and a few Monarchs were all spotted on this day when the temps reached 60 again.  Long live the Lepidoptera!  Maybe there never will be a month in Texas without them winging past. 

And that is something I should be thankful for don’t you think?  With Thanksgiving on the horizon then, lets say “Thank you God for the constancy of butterflies in my little corner of the world.”  May there be a constancy of beauty in your world too, in one form or the other. 

Greek Austerity Program for Birds

This is killing me.  I am a feeder of birds.  As long as I can remember I loved filling feeders, spreading out seed, making sure suet was in place in the winter.  I have always thought my Italian heritage led to this, “manga”, wild creatures” trait.  On the Cape, a chipmunk need only turn its glance my way and I would be refilling his whelk shell full of seeds.  The snows of winter had me re-scattering seed every time the old seed got covered up.

Here in Texas I continued the tradition, tube feeders, platform feeders, and hummingbird feeders.  I think I wrote about how the voracious white wing doves were going to triple the seed bill by showing up in droves and eating round the clock.  I had to stop scattering seed on the ground to slow the rate of seed disappearance and now I do have fewer doves. 

But then, about a month ago, maybe more, the dreaded house sparrows flew by, found not only food but also a wonderful hedge of jasmine and have decided they need look no further for the perfect home for their flock and their ever-growing progeny.  If you know about birds you know this is not good.  Immigrants who missed their familiar home birds here imported house sparrows, under the banner of “it seemed like a good idea at the time”, from England in the mid 1800’s.  Some claim they also were introduced into Central Park to help control canker worm but as they are predominantly seed feeders this doesn’t seem in retrospect like the brightest idea.   The birds became quite the rage and people throughout the country thought they too would like these robust sparrows. 

And so, over the ensuing years, they have multiplied exponentially, a species that can have 4-5 broods a year will do that, and as they are more aggressive than many of the other native song birds they are one of the reasons those species are declining.  I will spare you the details on just how aggressive they are, there may be children reading along, but it is the reason they are now the most abundant songbird on the continent.

Which is why I have taken the drastic step, a la Greece, of denying benefits.  I have cut my feeding down to one tube feeder of sunflower seeds and one tray on the porch.  At first they missed the millet but they seem now, of course, to be willing to eat the sunflower seed, which is more costly.  But I just can’t stop cold turkey for the Cardinals still make a showing, and when the mob of sparrows takes a break, the Chickadees and Titmice sneak in.  Scrub jays and Golden fronted woodpeckers make the sparrows scatter but the sweet little Least Goldfinch that was new to me in TX flits by, chickens out and leaves. And I even have a thistle feeder out for them if they would just spot it.

However, from what I read about House sparrows, getting rid of them is a pipedream.  Unless I am willing to take up arms and start shooting them, or buy some expensive trap and start catching and releasing them, which really only moves the problem elsewhere, I shall have to just lament my fate and try to find something interesting about this species. 

 For instance, I read that the male sparrows with the larger brown “bibs” seem to be more dominant.  That males with smaller “bibs” give way to the larger ones at feeders and that females won’t take being pushed around as easily by the smaller bibbed males either.  Interesting.  And how does one attain more dark feathers on the chest in the first place? Better nutrition?

Obviously, if any of you out there know of a nonviolent way to convince them to leave, please let me know.  I also know that when and if winter ever arrives, my resolve will break and I will just have to spread my feeders about the property to ensure everyone gets a chance to feed.   I have a feeling my Italian traits will trump this attempt at playing the Greek card.  And if I were a betting person I would put my money on the sparrows.