common goldeneye SPI

Here is the Goldeneye George found today under the fishing pier at Fish Bones Restaurant on South Padre Island.

capricorniacs enjoy morphosis of chrysalis

January birthday celebrations and for the 7th which is my morpho day I was greeted by a very fresh monarch just outside my door as I greeted the sunny day with a yummy warm step out onto the porch. First glance the sky and then the monarch took my face and turned my head to focus on her transformation. She was just pumping up her wings. She was free from her emerald ozanian
castle and now glowed orange and black. Glowing is hardly the word to describe her as her wings were like a new born still used to the watery suspension of weightlessness. Four legs clinging to the now gossamer remnants of her chrysalis, her wings were suddenly before my complete attention, fully formed but yet could not carry her to her destiny. She would be with me for a few more hours and wait for her sister to morph before she took to the winds. It was if she seemed to turn my head more and up to the last chrysalis hanging from the vinyl siding of our tiny little home. Five butterfly weeds in black plastic pots sit side by side on a redwood bench with only tiny sprouts at the tops of their stems. I had planned to take them to the convention center to plant in the trail of trees for the queen and monarch butterflies. I had taken them out of the car and put them on the porch for safe keeping until I could do so. As I started to pick them up the next day to take them to the trail I could see little tiny catapillars on them ravenously feeding on the milkweed leaves. I would wait.
They stripped the plant but the plant did not mind. It will grow back. In a few days the catis were huge and soon crawling everywhere to pupate
And so the emerald castles hung here and there dotted with gold. It was this last one that would make my fifty fourth day of my own transformation from a watery world to one filled with the breath of life another day of breathtaking wonder. I would stand up on the bench to be eye level, camera in hand and watch this now dark brown almost black chrysalis break open and become a butterfly. A monarch. One thing I did learn is that there are stages to the moment it splits and bursts forth and you can see this with me in these photos. Just look closely. She is beautiful. She came into the house with me to rest from the horrendous winds that began to howl thru the porch and even though protected by mexican love vine, passion vine, a bottlebrush tree, a tepaquajue and a huisache, it was not enough. She needed inside out of the wind to harden her wings for her new life as a butterfly. From a tiny egg laid on the underside of the butterfly weed, she hatched into a tiny little creepy crawler, ate herself silly and then spun a thread so strong to hold her tiny house around her while she turned the tides and decided to make herself sprout wings so she could see the world.. her world. Happy Capricornious days
to you all... Scarlet