Wednesday, May 10, 2017

April 2017

One morning, we decided to go to Kyker Bottoms Wildlife Refuge to see if we could see some tadpoles.  There were lots of them, and some had already grown their legs.  The ones we found were toad tadpoles.     
  Here are some ways to tell toad and frog tadpoles apart are. (1, Toad tadpoles are black during the day, while frog tadpoles are brown with spots, stripes and clear spots.  (2, Toad tadpoles have football shaped eyeballs, and are smaller than frogs.  (3, Frog tadpoles hide from the sun during the hottest part of the day, stay in one place for long periods of time, and tend to wander independently.  Toads, on the other hand, will sit in the direct sun, flick their tails even if they are not swimming, and gather in schools near the edges of banks. 
We also found a Black Swallowtail caterpillar on some parsley from our garden.  Last year we found about five or six of them.


For the past three years we have had a chickadee come and lay eggs in our birdhouse.  The eggs are white with orange/brown speckles.  We also had a robin nesting in a tree beside our house.  Their eggs are blue with darker blue speckles.