If you thought last week’s subjects (Meet the Beetles) were small, this week’s subjects are teeny tiny in comparison (and I’m not talking about my teeny tiny watercolor palette which I wrote about recently). Get out your magnifying glasses! 🔎
This week’s subject matter is insect eggs and brand new hatchlings—not just Tiny Little Friends but Teeny Tiny Little Friends!
![Perpetual Journal, week of May 7-13: Queen Butterfly Eggs and Lacewing Eggs on Milkweed (2024); Green Lacewing (2023) Perpetual Journal, week of May 7-13: Queen Butterfly Eggs and Lacewing Eggs on Milkweed (2024); Green Lacewing (2023)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8aeac7b1-4ca0-4e8a-85d8-129fd10c60d3_509x800.jpeg)
On May 11, Hubby & I watched a Queen Butterfly (QB) laying eggs on several of our Milkweeds and later noticed teeny tiny ovate white eggs on the Milkweed leaves. By “teeny tiny” I mean the eggs were about 1mm in length! Yes, there is a chance that our QB friend was Go Girl, Dee, or Eclose and/or that the father was Watney.
We also saw (thanks to our jewelers loupe) even smaller eggs on stalks—which we believe are Lacewing eggs! No, this is not the smallest subject matter I’ve ever drawn*.
I think it’s interesting that in last year’s May 7-13 Perpetual Journal art I described 12-25 Green Lacewings as “Many”. This year we had a population explosion of Lacewings on our patio and on May 8 I counted 133 Lacewings on our patio!!! Lacewing larvae eat aphids and other garden pests so they are definitely our friends! 🥰
Our New Teeny Tiny Little Friends
4-5 days after our initial sighting of a QB laying eggs, the eggs hatched and we saw teeny tiny QB larvae (caterpillars)! “Teeny tiny” in this case means 1.5mm length (at the most). Here’s a photo of one of those larvae, in all its teeny tiny glory! It doesn’t even have its stripes yet! Cute as a button, right?!
After 3-4 days the QB larvae were a whopping 0.25” long with noticeable stripes and the 3 sets of tubercles that differentiate them from Monarch Butterfly larvae (which have only 2 sets of tubercles). After a week they had grown so much they were no longer Teeny Tiny Little Friends—they’d grown into ginormous 😁Tiny Little Friends at 0.5” long!
…and Our New Little Friends!
Way back on March 11 Hubby & I heard two Western Screech Owls calling near our front porch, where we have an owl box. Since that date we’ve seen a Western Screech Owl looking out of the owl box almost daily, usually at dusk.
Fast forward to May 16 at dusk when we saw a small Owlet poking his/her head out of the owl box hole!!! Excitement Plus!!!!!! 🤩 Here’s a photo of one of our new little friends!
Is that just the cutest little thing? Wow!
In case you’re interested in geeking out on Western Screech Owls a bit more, according to The Birder’s Handbook Western Screech Owls lay 2-5 eggs per clutch; the incubation period of the eggs is 21-30 days; and the young owlets take 28 days to fledge.
* The smallest subject matter I’ve ever drawn was my own chromosomes as viewed through a microscope during a genetics class in college (and yes, seeing my own chromosomes was Beyond Way Cool!). I could clearly see the X-shaped structures of my chromosomes and the different-sized pairs. YES, I have the correct number of chromosomes in case you were wondering! Ha! Not only were these the smallest subjects I’ve ever drawn, they’re probably the coolest! 😍 🤩
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