Monarch Mania

When I was a little girl it was a huge treat to find a Monarch (or any other kind) caterpillar.  Even though I lived in a very rural area growing up I never really knew what their eggs looked like or how to find them.  Back then we didn't have Google Image search!  The past few years I have been looking for the caterpillars, but despite the abundance of milkweed in my town I have only found one or two in the 8 years I've lived here.

That has all changed.

When I am determined to do something I am the kind of person that will do everything in my earthly power to make it happen.  I decided to become determined to find eggs and larvae, and lots of them.  My 8 year old daughter has been deathly afraid of insects for as long as I can remember, even butterflies.  This does not make sense to me because I spent my childhood in search of the weirdest looking bugs I could find.  A Helgramite takes that cake, by the way.  I turned over rocks, peeled bark, played in fields of tall grass for hours, and could often be found in a swampy ditch with tadpoles in hand.

In order to help my daughter conquer this fear I figured that if she could go out and help me find eggs and then watch the whole amazing process of metamorphosis in her own home that perhaps she would find a new appreciation for the incredible world outside.

We had already hatched one butterfly from a caterpillar I had found in my garden.  I tried to stay up to see it come out of the chrysalis but it happened very early in the morning last weekend.  I got some photos of the chrysalis and then of the adult before I let him go.

Unfortunately the kids didn't get to see him before he flew away so I felt that we should try again.  In one day we found 10 eggs.

The first 5 we found in the cemetery near my house.  Then we went on to my parents' house in Westford and found 5 more plus an almost full grown caterpillar (4th instar) and a probably 2 day old caterpillar on the same plant!  I put the ends of the leaves in a shallow tupperware with enough water in it to keep the stems wet.  I put the caterpillars each in their own small tupperwares.  Then I put everything in the Butterfly Pavilion that my friend gave me.

Today I took an early morning walk with my daughter and just because we were walking past some milkweeds we decided to look for the heck of it.  We brought home 3 more eggs.

Then I went across the street into the field next to the construction site and the Dollar General to get some fresh leaves to feed all these prospective creatures.  I read somewhere that they like the freshest youngest leaves possible.  In the center of the path that is mowed through that field were a bunch of young plants that were popping up.  I picked them as close to the ground as possible so that I could keep them in glasses of water and have fresh leaves.  Upon closer inspection I noticed that there were eggs on several of the leaves!

So now we are up to I think 16 eggs, 1 mature caterpillar and 1 baby caterpillar.  One of the eggs is just about ready to hatch also!  I'm going to be a busy leaf gatherer soon if all of them hatch!

Lightning Fever!

Over the last couple of weeks some strong storms have moved through and past my area.  Because I have been participating in a Facebook group that has brought over 150 Vermont photographers together I have found myself a little more daring and resolved to better my photography and try new things.  Namely, trying to get a good shot of lightning on purpose.

Here is a pic that I took back in 2010 after a storm that I got caught a mile away from home walking in:

That was the only one I had taken that came out good in the past 3 years.  It was handheld and totally accidental. 

Now I have learned the importance of a tripod for such things.  I usually hate using a tripod because it really restricts me and limits me to that one spot.  However, I used one a week ago and got this photo:

This storm was particularly violent so the odds of me getting a shot of lightning were in my favor.  I waited until the storm was flashing in my back yard and then opened my back screen door, set up my tripod, and started pressing the shutter button.  I pushed that button 350+ times to get this one!  Again though, it was more of a lucky shot than anything else.  

This past Saturday I happened to look out the window and saw this:

I got all excited because I hadn't seen any of these this year yet, and because I knew I would get another chance to try to get a lightning shot, this time at night so I could do it the "right" way.  When it got dark enough, around 9:30pm, I got my camera, tripod, and wireless remote and ran across the road to the Dollar General parking lot.  I wore sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt and socks because it was so buggy I knew that I would get eaten alive.  The cloud was fairly active so I played around to see what settings would work.  

Using BULB mode, I decided that an aperture of about 8.1 was sufficient, and an ISO of 200.  I held the shutter open up to 40 seconds, depending if I caught a flash of lightning or not.  I also strongly recommend using RAW format if you can.  It takes much less time to recover from long shutter speeds.

Here are the best results:

 

This one was 40 seconds exposed.  

I wish I could have stayed out there longer but it was just too buggy and my husband was waiting for me so we could watch Cheers, which he had never seen before until last week :)

Looking forward to the next storm so I can try again!

Betsy Finstad