Wildlife Wednesday, the debut

Thanks to Tina Huckabee at My Gardener Says..., there is now a Wildlife Wednesday meme--the first Wednesday of the month is dedicated to photos and description of the animal kingdom visitors who grace our gardens.

Since this is the debut, I'll post the few pics of wildlife I've captured over the past year or so. I'm no great photographer, and I probably only manage to capture one or two wildlife sightings out of ten. But I'll do my best to collect them in this post. I'm no champ and identifying them either, but this will be a good motivator for me to learn.

See the little guy hiding behind the trellis, on the horizontal fence board? I believe he's a Texas Spiny Lizard, Sceloporus olivaceus. We've seen this guy or his relatives several times over the years, particularly in hot weather, and most often clutching a window screen--we've often had the belly view from inside the house. Wise little guy, he tends to favor brushy spots where he can easily hide.

Here's what I think might be a Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar (Papilio glaucus). He was scaling a tomato vine, which isn't one of his host plants, but maybe he had wandered over there from the remains of the fennel, or perhaps the carrot greens.

Correction: This is much more likely a Tomato Hornworm, which partially explains why my tomato plant took a turn for the ugly. Thanks for catching this, Tina!

Earlier this year, I snapped a photo of a large Crookneck Squash blossom, with itty bitty ants crawling all over it.  I didn't know whether or not they were beneficial, so I assumed they were either beneficial or harmless and let them be. This webpage seems to support that theory.

These two butterfly photos are from last year. The black one is a Pipevine Swallowtail, Battus philenor (with some pretty blue at the bottom of its wings, if you take a close look). The orange-and-black one is an American Lady, Vanessa virginiensis. Thanks to Tim Jones at Ground Truth Investigations for helping me identify them last year.

Of course, my wildlife post wouldn't be complete without a shot of one of the several resident Anole lizards, Anolis carolinensis. These little guys (and gals) have been occupants of our garden, probably long before we were. They seem to enjoy the deck--we think they might live under there--and they show up on the walls behind our flower and veggie beds all the time. We see them in brown, green and sometimes even a plum purple color, and sometimes we get to watch them change. We see their babies in the spring. We've always been fond of these little lizards.