Backyard and Beyond

All this week I’ve been detailing little pieces of the great mosaic of life around here. That’s what this blog has been doing for years now, sure, but this week’s cicada / Cicada-killer wasp / Mockingbird sequence was vary connect-the-dots. Usually I see something and then say something, building up observation after observation, painting a picture — I hope — of complicated and threatened biodiversity here in the city. And everywhere: the corporate-plutocratic-fascist arson in the Brazilian Amazon is going to makes things so much worse.
Yet these creatures persist. Under the milkweed leaves… a male mosquito, I think, and a very small Monarch caterpillar. That’s another in the first picture above. These were perhaps 7mm long, the smallest instar or stage of life I’ve ever seen for this species.
An adult depositing an egg, too quick for me to drop down to my knee and get focused.
Here’s another planting on egg on the underside of the leaf.
Monarch eggs are so small.
Here’s another egg. Above it is an emptied egg, I think. Below it looks like some tiny organism sucking life-giving juices from the plant.
The caterpillars get so fat!
Even their droppings are substantial.
A weary fighter on her last wings.