Wildlife Wednesday June 2016

Wildlife in the garden during May brought a couple of special butterfly sightings and a few other amusing wildlife antics.  Wildlife Wednesday hosted by Tina at "My Gardener Says..." presents bloggers an opportunity to share wildlife in the garden on the first Wednesday of each month.

Butterfly identification can be challenging as with this striking white butterfly.  At first I thought it was a Cabbage White Butterfly, but it lacked the dark edge on the forewing and has distinctive bands instead of spots.  After searching I'm going with male Checkered White Butterfly (Pontia protodice) which is so much better since Cabbage White Butterflies are not native.  Interestingly, they both use members of the cabbage and mustard family as host plants.  I could not find any information to confirm whether these butterflies consume the invasive weed Rapistrum rugosum or Bastard Cabbage which has been decimating our native wildflower fields.

Neighborhood wildflowers for National Wildflower Week

May 4-12, 2013 is National Wildflower Week sponsored by The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas.

I'm posting photos of wildflowers growing in a field near my house.  The field is commercial property and will be developed eventually.  I enjoy walking there and often collect seeds from plants to add to my garden.  The area below is a small arroyo which feeds the creek along our backyard.