What's Bloomin' in Shrewsbury

06/06/2026

Our Shrewsbury Environmental Commission will be representing our beautiful town of Shrewbury🌏

05/28/2026

You can tell what a bird eats by looking at its face for one second. The bill is the tool. The shape is the job description.

The cardinal's thick conical bill is a seed crusher — built to crack sunflower shells with force. The chickadee's thin pointed bill is a pair of precision tweezers — picking caterpillars and spiders off leaves one at a time. Same feeder. Completely different equipment.

🌿 The nighthawk is the one that stops people. Her mouth opens wider than her head — a scoop that catches moths in mid-flight. She's not pecking. She's flying with her mouth open and filtering the air.

The heron's bill is a dagger. She stands still for twenty minutes, then strikes faster than you can track — spearing fish, frogs, and mice from the shallows. The woodpecker's bill is a chisel, hammering into bark to extract larvae hidden inside.

The crow's bill does everything adequately and nothing perfectly — seeds, fruit, insects, garbage. The generalist tool for the generalist bird.

Eight bill shapes. Eight diets. The bird at the feeder already told you what she eats — you just have to look at the tool she brought 🐾

05/25/2026

I’m so grateful
Your turn let’s see what blooming in your yard?

05/17/2026

05/17/2026

Our saving grace- Trees are like moms ♥️ they clean up after our mess

05/10/2026

I don't see the group that was in front of Tinton Falls
Boro Hall.

05/10/2026

That's not a monarch caterpillar on your dill. The host plant is the identification.

Monarch caterpillars eat milkweed. Only milkweed. A caterpillar on your dill, parsley, fennel, or carrot tops is not a monarch — it's a black swallowtail. The two are sometimes confused because both have bold banding patterns, but they eat completely different plants and belong to different families.

The host plant is the fastest field ID for any caterpillar. 🌿

A black swallowtail caterpillar is bright green with black bands and yellow or orange dots within each band. It feeds on plants in the carrot family — dill, parsley, fennel, Queen Anne's lace, carrot tops, and celery. It curls into a J shape when disturbed and extends an orange forked osmeterium from behind its head, releasing a foul smell.

A monarch caterpillar has white, yellow, and black stripes in a consistent banding pattern. It feeds exclusively on milkweed. It never appears on dill or parsley.

The confusion matters because gardeners who find caterpillars on their herbs sometimes remove them — assuming they're pests. The black swallowtail caterpillar eats a small amount of foliage, pupates, and becomes one of the most common and beautiful butterflies in the eastern states.

🐾 Quick ID:

- On dill, parsley, fennel, or carrot tops = black swallowtail
- On milkweed = monarch
- Green with black bands and yellow dots = black swallowtail
- White/yellow/black consistent stripes = monarch
- Both are native. Both are beneficial. Neither is a pest.

The caterpillar eating your dill isn't a pest. It's a butterfly in progress. The herb recovers. The butterfly doesn't come back if you remove the larva.