Lots of Monarch Caterpillars

It's the Labour Day long weekend, hard to believe that summer zipped by that fast yet again. There are still nice temperatures out there, and lots to see. It's raptor migration season beginning, and the Monarch butterflies are on their 4th stage of their life cycle, this 4th generation that will be born soon, will be the one that heads to Mexico.

We saw Monarch butterflies mating a couple weeks ago, and on our recent walk at Tommy Thompson this weekend, we saw quite a lot of the little results munching milkweed leaves, the Monarch caterpillars. There were other types of caterpillars there, one we saw a lot of, the Milkweed Tussock Moth's caterpillar, which are quite the sight, with their spiky orange black and white hairy selves. Lucky I did Not give in to my impulse to touch its hairy spiky fur as apparently it has an irritant or poison that can burn and sting lol! There was a Tiger Moth orange fuzzy caterpillar, and a Hickory Tussock Moth, another poisonous caterpillar.

The Monarch caterpillars were plentiful, we did not spot any chrysalis' but we saw at least 25 Monarch caterpillars, all over milkweed. Some were small, some were huge. We also saw one Polyphemus Moth caterpillar, which looked to be beginning to build it's cocoon, but hard to know for sure. They are huge green caterpillars.

The gold finches were going nuts on the thistle seeds, there was a juvenile cormorant swimming near the bridge, a kingfisher hovering over the marsh area, and 2 families of Trumpeter swans with juvenile swans with them. A couple egrets flew by and we spotted one in the marsh. Terns are still around.

Tommy Thompson is great for a good long walk with very little incline changes. Our main intention to go there for our weekend nature hike/walk was for the possible Monarch chrysalis sightings, and maybe a bald eagle fly by high above and way far away. We did not hold out much hope of the odds being in our favour, but we were pleasantly thrilled and surprised both those hopeful sightings were Almost met!

We didn't see a chrysalis, but we Did see plenty of Monarchs, their caterpillars, and lots of other interesting caterpillars. Yes, we did get to see a bald eagle, but not a far away fly by, we saw a juvenile perched in a tree. John spotted his tail and back from a bit away. As we rounded the trees he was in, there he was, a bald eagle, looking around, sitting shaded in the leaves of the tree. At one point he looked over towards me and seemed to stare into my eyes. We stood and looked at him for a bit, then we continued on. We felt very very lucky to get to see him and hope he is fine, as he'll most likely be on his way by now, to where he was headed.

Snowy Owl and Far Away Bald Eagle in Toronto!

It is very hard to believe that such creatures are able to be seen in Toronto, Ontario, but they are! Bald Eagles were not a sight that I recall one just being able to casually look up into the sky and see flying over head, and to remark, "hey, there's a bald eagle."

It actually went down more like this; "hey, what is that?" "what, where? Oh, I don''t know, let me look." "OMG, holy ^%$&, it's a Bald Eagle!" After looking through my lens, although the large dark bird was far away, it was quite easy to tell, after zooming up the image to look at it on my camera view that it was bald eagle! John and I remarked that possibly it is due to the fact that spraying pesticides was banned a few years back, that the eagles are happier here again, but I'm not an expert, nor am I an environmentalist.

We did quite the long walk down at the shores of Lake Ontario. Not only did I find a cool piece of purple sea glass on the shoreline, but we were thrilled to also see our first Snowy Owl that wasn't a tiny speck way out on the pier like the one we saw in 0212 at Whitby Harbour.

It was windy, it was cold, and my feet were sore, but it was definitely worth all that to be taken by sudden surprise as a female Snowy Owl soared right over our heads and floated around on the updraft a while before disappearing behind a line of trees. 

Later on we spotted a big white thing in the distance, sitting, and sure enough, as we followed along the path, we got closer to her and there she sat on an old dead piece of wood. She rested there for a bit, and we got to watch her from a bit of a distance. Eventually she lifted off and flew on. 

What a beautiful creature to behold.

I hope she will be able to find enough food if she remains around during the winter months. I hope she will be ok.

We did see some other creatures, Longtail Ducks, Trumpeter Swans which were most likely this past summer's babies, and Merganser Ducks, Gadwells, and Bufflehead Ducks. The light was dull but there were a lot of little gems to spot.