Today I went out to check on the Swallowtail eggs and was happy to see they had hatched. Being so small, I can’t see too much detail, but hopefully as they get bigger their very destictive characteristics will become visable. 

I purchased four spicebushes for the prairie and set them out, still in their buckets, to make sure I had them placed in a good spot.  I was sitting on my front porch enjoying my prairie, when i noticed a beautiful Spicebush Swallowtail.  It would repeatedly land on one of the bushes, then fly in a circle, and land on another bush.  Intrigued with curiosity, I later went out to check to see if I could find any evidence of what it was doing.  I was very pleasantly surprised to find small white eggs underneath several leaves.  I was very impressed with the effectiveness of these bushes, for they had been in my prairie for less than 24 hours.

While taking one of my drives through LaSalle county, I came across what appears to be a sub-division in the waiting.  It looks like the road has been there for several years, but has yet to have a house built.  But what caught my interest, was the mass amounts of native plants.  There are several different kinds of sedges, two different kinds of mountain mint, and I even found wild strawberry bushes, which of course my daughter ate the strawberries.  I plan on taking several trips there to rescue and transplant many of these plants to my prairie.

While pulling up some Curly Dock in the prairie I came across a pair of Tomato Hornworms.  At about 4 inches long, they can defoliate a plant pretty quickly.  They feed on tomato plants as well as peppers, potato, eggplant, and tobacco plants.  They will turn into a moth with a 5-inch wingspan and be able to hover like a hummingbird.

Although we have had just one cicada sighting here in Norway Illinois, I was excited to have found a bunch in the Seneca/Marsailles areas while en route to take my kids fishing.  I heard the buzzing sound and had to stop off and take a few pictures, and of course to flick a few off my finger.  My two kids were even brave enough for me to put one on them, until of course they started their call.