Cormorant family grows and Goose family returns

We've been seeing up to 5 cormorants in the canal over the last few weeks.  It's fun to see them swimming and diving together to find their dinner and arguing over the prized spot on the sprinkler duck that is a favorite for drying their wings.  And today we had 7 of them in the canal!  How fun to see the family grow!  I suspect most of them are just visiting our resident cormorant patriarch.  The family from up north, no doubt.

Some of the group cruising around the canal

A close-up showing the reflection in the water!

The main man gets the prime floater spot and keeps everyone else in line.

One enterprising guy took over the neighbor's floater across the canal.

 

Another backyard family, the Egyptian geese parents and their 9 kids,  who had been with us a while ago but then suddenly disappeared, reappeared this morning.  The kids are almost full size now.  They were ravenous and ate like crazy!  It's nice to see them back, and that all survived their babyhood.  That's quite a feat, but goose parents are very protective, and fierce enough to get rid of any trouble that tries to come around.  You can't see any ducks in the picture because mom and dad goose "encouraged" them to move to the side yard.

The goose gang takes over the backyard

Youngster looks full-grown except his full rich colors are not quite there yet.

The third family of note in the backyard is the gallinules.  Mom and dad had three babies and they all come into the backyard to eat.  The babies pick up duck pellets by themselves but still prefer mom and dad to feed them, and peep incessantly to let them know.

The backyard action was rounded out by several solo visitors.  A great blue heron landed on our side of the canal.  I usually see them across the water.

Tall and stately, and on our side of the water.

In the water, a mossy turtle swam by.  He needs a makeover!

This guy needs a spa-day to get rid of all that algae.

The dragonflies were out and about, and I saw one of my favorites, a scarlet skimmer.  Its colors are just so striking!

His facial color matches his body.

The rest of the post will discuss the continuing saga of the Monarch caterpillars and butterflies that are maturing.  There are actually 3 rounds of the Monarch process in progress, all at different stages.  They are rounds numbered 3, 4 and 5 for this season.  

The round 3 Monarchs are pretty much all done hatching from their cocoons (chrysalises to be correct).  The girl that hatched yesterday and could not fly well so I put her back in the enclosure for the night,  flew away immediately and was flying great.  She just needed a little more time.  It appears that another of that group must have escaped my eyes when I moved them to the enclosure, and there was a boy butterfly flying around inside the pool screen.  I rescued him with a net and put him outside on a penta plant to rest.  He couldn't fly well either and looked a little ragged and not fully colored.  He took off from the penta but landed right back on it.  Later in the day he was gone, so maybe he just needed more rest.

This boy is having a rough start.

The next round of caterpillars, round 4, have finished eating and are in the process of cocooning.  Two are done, and four more are preparing to do it.  One of the first two chrysalises fell, and I found it on the floor of the enclosure.  One side had not hardened properly.  I hung it up again, but I doubt it will survive. One of the last four started to make its chrysalis but couldn't finished and died trying to complete it.  It looks like one I've seen that had insecticide poisoning, though I don't know how that could have happened.  I don't use insecticides.

The final round, round 5, is the one where most of the tiny caterpillars which just recently hatched from their eggs, were living in a Tupperware container until they get bigger.  It's hard to move such tiny ones to the enclosure, so I had hoped that they would grow a bit in the container before I moved them.  There were 10 of them in the container ,and they were all eating away happily.  But today I saw that most of them had died.  I moved the survivors to the enclosure in hopes that they will do better there.  I have no idea what happened.  There were 5 that I never put into the Tupperware and that were eating on the original plant, but that I didn't see when I put the others in the container.  Lucky for them as they did much better and are much bigger than the Tupperware ones even though they are the same age.  I moved them into the enclosure today and have a feeling that these will be OK.  Time will tell.  Stay tuned.