Day 23: the tigers are about

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BREAKING NEWS!

You may not have noticed. You've been at home, socially distant. But the first generation of yellow and black tigers are out.

Today, the Tennessee Valley looked like a landscape painting by American artist Grant Wood with the yellow-green canopy rounded, billowy with lushness. There is a fertileness to his work especially his trees, they are newborn, bursting with possibility.

Tiger swallowtail egg. WikiMedia

And you would expect to see butterflies fluttering about your zinnias and lantana in your backyard. But eastern tiger swallowtails (Papilio glaucus) are very active much higher up—forty, fifty even sixty feet up. They overwinter in their chrysalises, and emerge in a perfect bit of natural synchronicity as the trees leaf out. Female tigers lay their pale green eggs on the new leaves of tuliptrees and wild cherry to name a few of their host trees. And when those eggs hatch, the caterpillars will chew holes in the fresh new leaves. You could call it a metaphor.

Our man-in-the-woods noticed the activity and had to fetch his binoculars to watch the tigers chasing each other about. "Midsummer Nights Dream" kind of commingling. Was Puck there? I do believe he was. Indeed, they were frolicking, occasionally stopping to sip a bit of nectar from the cherry trees in bloom.

What can the staff of Nature Calling say? 

Ob-la-de, ob-la-da.

Too far away to photograph one. Had to draw. 

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