Birds Blooms and Butterflies by Design

11/11/2023

03/11/2023

Mornings in the mountains. Surprised her.

07/16/2022

Borage, what an amazing and beautiful flowering herb! It is edible, has many medicinal uses, is a trap plant for aphids, attracts beneficial insects and pollinators, benefits song birds, self seeds itself, just to name a few!

Has anyone else grown it?
Click 👇 for more interesting info:

https://www.ruralsprout.com/borage/

06/19/2022

Our first Monarch of the year! Seen here on native milkw**d.This specific species is asclepias tuberosa or commonly called butterfly w**d.

It’s really not a w**d but an amazing native wildflower! Asclepias is the only plant family that serves as the host plant for monarch butterfly egg laying. The monarch larvae, the hatchling caterpillars, feed exclusively on milkw**d leaves. Without milkw**d, there can be no monarch butterflies.

There are over 100 native species of milkw**d plants found in the United States.

Planting local milkw**d species is always best. You can collect your own seed or purchase seed or plants to add to your garden. Three species have particularly wide ranges and are good choices in most regions: common milkw**d (Asclepias syriaca), swamp milkw**d (A. incarnata), and butterflyw**d (A. tuberosa). The latter two are highly ornamental and widely available via the nursery trade.

Here is a great resource 👇

https://www.nwf.org/Garden-For-Wildlife/About/Native-Plants/Milkw**d.aspx

06/17/2022

A Flower Power way to start your day! Gardening, learning, and having fun.

Nasturtiums can add a peppery flavor to salads, sandwiches and even omelettes! They are loaded with vitamin C as well!

Nasturtium seeds can even be used as a substitute for capers, as well. Just pick the nasturtium seeds while they’re still green and haven’t hardened. Put them in a glass bottle or jar and cover them with vinegar. You can use them after three days of them soaking in the vinegar and they don’t need refrigeration.

Nasturtiums as companion plants:
Companion planting is defined as plants you plant among other plants that you value such as roses or a vegetable crop that attract beneficial insects, repel bad guys, or trick the bad guys with scent disguise.

Nasturtiums fit nicely into the companion plant category by helping to repel hornworms and attracting hoverflies, which will destroy aphids.

05/30/2022

One nation under God.

05/22/2022

Good morning sunshine!

05/21/2022

Yesss

05/13/2022

Dueling Cardinals...could there be a feathery female involved?

05/01/2022

Yet another feathery friend who enjoys a little grape jelly snack!

Northern Mockingbirds eat mainly insects in summer but switch to eating mostly fruit in fall and winter. They don’t visit feeders often but do enjoy suet. Among their animal prey are beetles, earthworms, moths, butterflies, ants, bees, wasps, grasshoppers, and sometimes small lizards. They eat a wide variety of berries, including from ornamental bushes, as well as fruits from multiflora rose. They’ve been seen drinking sap from the cuts on recently pruned trees.

Northern Mockingbirds continue to add new sounds to their repertoires throughout their lives. A male may learn around 200 songs throughout its life.

Click 👇 for more.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Mockingbird/overview

04/26/2022

The Baltimore Orioles are back and enjoying a little snack of grape jelly and orange slices during these Summer like temps!

Cool Facts:

Unlike robins and many other fruit-eating birds, Baltimore Orioles seem to prefer only ripe, dark-colored fruit. Orioles seek out the darkest mulberries, the reddest cherries, and the deepest-purple grapes, and will ignore green grapes and yellow cherries even if they are ripe.

The Baltimore Oriole hybridizes extensively with the Bullock's Oriole where their ranges overlap in the Great Plains. The two species were considered the same for a while and called the Northern Oriole, but in the 1990s, after genetic studies, they were separated again.

Young male Baltimore Orioles do not molt into bright-orange adult plumage until the fall of their second year. Still, a few first-year males in drab, female-like plumage succeed in attracting a mate and raising young. Females become deeper orange with every molt; some older females are almost as bright orange as males.

The orioles of the Americas were named after similar-looking birds in the Old World, but the two groups are not closely related. Orioles of the Old World are in the family Oriolidae, whereas American orioles are in the same family as blackbirds and meadowlarks. Both New and Old World orioles are brightly colored with red, yellow, and black; have long tails and long pointed bills; build hanging, woven nests; and prefer tall trees around open areas.

Baltimore Orioles got their name from their bold orange-and-black plumage: they sport the same colors as the heraldic crest of England’s Baltimore family (who also gave their name to Maryland’s largest city).

Baltimore Orioles sometimes use their slender beaks to feed in an unusual way, called “gaping”: they stab the closed bill into soft fruits, then open their mouths to cut a juicy swath from which they drink with their brushy-tipped tongues.

The oldest recorded Baltimore Oriole was over 12 years old when it was caught and killed by a raptor in Minnesota.

Click 👇 for more interesting facts, pics, and sounds.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Baltimore_Oriole/overview