by Mary Reid Barrow

Rock a Bye, Baby, in the Tree Top. Dale Browning in Baycliff proudly announces the long awaited birth of her grandbird, Sky. Sky, a rare Mississippi kite, was born in a nearby pine tree.

Both Grandmom Dale and Baby Sky are doing well.

Note: See Dale’s videos of Sky set to music and illustrated by LRNow’s Communications Manager Emily Willis on our Instagram.

For more on Dale’s discovery of the Mississippi kite, a rare bird in this area, see this recent Nature Notes.

Cocoon or chrysalis? That is my dilemma.

After my last Nature Notes, a couple of you emailed to say I was wrong when I wrote that a monarch egg in my yard would hatch into a caterpillar and that if luck was with it, the caterpillar would make a cocoon and eventually hatch into a monarch butterfly.

They are exactly right. Moths spin cocoons from silk while butterfly caterpillars and many other insects shed their skins and an inner shell forms to protect the developing butterfly.

I do have a defense, but I don’t know if it is a strong enough leg to stand on. My sense was and may still be that other lay people, like me, relate better to less scientific words.

The word “cocoon” is a scientific term, but it also connotes a cozy space while the word “chrysalis” might go in one ear and out the other.

I didn’t have room for a lot of explanation, so I chose the easy way out. It still feels like a little bit of a dilemma.

Another Dilemma: New Weed or new guest?

My plant ID says it’s a Carolina ponysfoot, Dichondra carolinensis, a native of southeastern United States but I could not find it listed in the Digital Atlas of Virginia Flora.

It’s very sweet and small and trails along the ground in clumps. It has very small white flowers though mine is not blooming. Its name, ponysfoot, is endearing too!

Am I lucky to have it in my yard or just lucky that I haven’t seen it before?