Red the travelling Dal visits Canada

[Alliecat]

Ugh, I gotta do these in smaller batches.  Having to change all the sizes between Dal House's "small" requirement and here, takes forEVER.  And even when you tell Flickr to sort chronologically, it still mixes them up.  >sigh<

I’ve heard that butterflies are naturally attracted to bright colours, so that may be why they preferred Red’s hair to her hands. What are the pretty bright red flowers?

They're gladioli.  
The hatchlings have an instinct to climb, until they reach something they can hang onto easily.  So if I put them on a doll's hands, or shirt, they'll inevitably climb into her hair.

...so not breeding as such, but helping out nature to get them started okay.

Yes, they are endangered, or threatened, or whatever "official" category they've been given now... many years ago when a bunch of neighbours in Ontario tried to stop the trashing and housebuilding-on of a lovely little nature area, Monarchs weren't considered threatened enough for anyone to care that the area was also a nursery for many caterpillars.  I like to try to give them as good a start as possible.  In the garden, they may fall prey to spiders, parasitic wasps, or viruses.  Not to say we don't have casualties in the jars too, which always makes me feel really bad.  But I figure a few more might survive than if they were all outside.

How the heck do you "tag" a butterfly without injuring it?
I want to come visit there. When will you be opening a vacation rental?
(When will travel be allowed again???)

Well, for what it's worth, they are now allowing in suitably-poked-and-papered travellers....  I'm not gonna say anything more on the general state of travel and other things...  

Tagging butterflies.... a sticker.  I tagged for Fred Urquhart's program for many years growing up.  One of his grad students discovered the wintering site in Mexico.  I got a whole whack of stickers from him every year, as did many others, which was what helped delineate the migration routes.  You rubbed the scales off the largest panel of the forewing, on both sides, and folded the teeny sticker over the front.  They worked really well.  I even patched broken wing vanes with them on occasion when they got injured in a box or crimped in the net.  Monarch Watch in Kansas is doing sticker-tagging, but it's a big round thing that goes on the hindwing and, when I tried them, they didn't stick.  If I recall, as well as having to buy them, they were only good for one year.  Good luck guessing how many you should buy.  And after finding 1 or 2 in my yard after I launched the butterflies, I didn't get any more.  Too bad... it was really fun chasing butterflies as an adult for Science.  


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"Hi everyone!  Thanks for reading my adventures in Canada.  We've got that vacation mood... where you want to pack in as much as you can because you feel the time passing.
"Today we went lighthouse-ing.  It was a beautiful day (except for mosquitoes).  Some of these pictures would've been a lot prettier if some idiot* hadn't forgotten the polarizer.  That's what you get for not taking the whole camera bag.  Anyway, Alliecat took a ton of pictures again, so here they are."

*not me



"This is the lighthouse we saw the other night.  It's called Swallowtail and is the best known on the island."






"The boardwalk was reconstructed as it would have been long ago.  The lighthouse and keeper's house have been extensively restored."



"Alliecat says I was on that.  Too bad I was in a box."






"I borrowed a camera."



"The old keeper's house."






" "



"You can see lots of seabirds and whales here."






"We were bummed that the tower wasn't open today.  I really wanted to go to the top.  Alliecat knows people she should have called....
"Anyway, the lighthouse was built in 1859 in response to a shipwreck nearby in which 21 sailors drowned.  It had lighthouse keepers until 1986 when it was de-staffed and automated."






"Helllooooooo...."



"O Ca- na- da....."



"There are 4 ferry round-trips a day with one boat year-round, and three extra round-trips with a second boat in the summer."



"...and it's an hour and a half each way, so going anywhere is never spontaneous."






"This cupola was airlifted by Coast Guard helicopter to here from another island in 2015 and Alliecat was here to watch."



"Lighthouse-keeping could be dangerous, if not from weather, then from accidents.  This lighthouse keeper's wife was killed trying to light the lantern in 1936 when it caught fire... and so did she."






"I was too short to reach the mallet to ring the bell.  (It weighs 2000 pounds!)  Someone asked what I was doing.  He wanted to know if travel dolls are like geocaching.  Um.... no.  Don't leave me in the middle of nowhere for someone to find!"



"Glad I'm getting a ride up these 54 steps!"



"Herring swimming near shore are diverted by the net curtain into the circular part of the weir, and from there they're basically vacuumed out.  This is low tide."



"Another lighthouse!"



"This one is locally called 'The Whistle', properly 'Long Eddy'.  It used to have a steam-driven fog whistle, and was built in 1874."



"This deck is brand new and will have a memorial plaque for a lady who spearheaded a lot of the restoration."






"Maine is 7 miles away across the channel."



"Tourists as well as locals come here for sunset (the normal kind... but maybe Sunsette could put on a show?).  We left when it got too people-y."





Red at Whistle by Alliecat09, on Flickr