TFN Juniors Summer Adventures with Caterpillars

Hello Junior Naturalists!

Thanks to everyone who submitted photos to the slideshow below. So exciting to have several folks raising caterpillars–please keep photographing your caterpillar pets and keep us up to date.

Please have fun doing the Lepidopteran (Moths and Butterflies) Match-up by Vannessa. After you download the game, most PDF reading programs will allow you to draw lines, which you can use to match the caterpillar on the left to the corresponding moth or butterfly on the right. Or, you can print the pdf and then draw the lines on the paper with a marker. However you do the game, email us your answers (as a saved-PDF or as a photo of your printed page) and we’ll announce next week how many got it right!

This Week’s Game

We encountered the Gypsy moth caterpillar several times this past week–Gypsy moths are everywhere this year, in great numbers! Please find below a video from the city of Toronto about the Moth and what is being done to reduce the damage to trees. Our own Monica Radovski has been involved in this program for the city, and suggested this video us.

Next Week’s Challenge

Your new challenge for the coming week is to have a close look at some flowers. For plants to make seeds, pollen from one flower must land on the pistil of a different flower of the same species. Try to figure out what strategy a flower is using to make this happen. Does it employ wind, or insects for the job? How does it avoid pollinating itself? Try dissecting a flower and drawing what you see.Look forward to seeing your artwork and photos!

Toronto Field Naturalists wishes to acknowledge this Land through which we walk. For thousands of years, the Land has been shared by the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, and the Anishinaabe. Toronto is situated on the Land within the Toronto Purchase, Treaty 13, the traditional and treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is also part of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum, a covenant agreement between Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Wendat peoples and allied nations to peaceably share the land and all its resources. Today, the Land is home to peoples of numerous nations. We are all grateful to have the opportunity to continue to care for and share the beauty of this Land.