Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: DAILY BUTTERFLIES Page 15, 0 by TexasPuddyPrint

TexasPuddyPrint wrote:
Great photos everyone. Lucky Lucy!!! Gotta love that huge moth!!!

Deb...I can see the red on that ruby throated HB a mile away!!! That sure stands out!!!

Thea...BSTs are fun to raise. Pretty healthy for the majority of the time...although they can get into fights with smaller cats. I started off raising Queens (as we get those by the thousands). Once I got my feet wet as far as cat raising went I graduated to Giant Swallowtails, Black Swallowtails, Pipevine Swallowtails and a couple of other big cats. Then I got brave and raised some Ceraunus Blues - ooh those were wee buggers!!! The chrysalids were no bigger than a grain of rice!!!

Like Deb, I too went crazy planting every conceivable larval host for butterflies I wanted to attract to my yard. It gets nuts at times and have been letting Mother Nature take her course for the most part with the species of butterflies I have already raised and documented. I still raise some if I feel they are in peril but they do quite well on their own. I do kill off spiders and assassin bugs when I find them...as well as grab lizards and throw them over into the neighbor's yard :o)

Keep up the good work and feel free to share photos, questions and comment. That goes for everyone else. I know I get tied up with my own yard critters that I neglect to send kudos to everyone on here who raises butterflies and moths.

Sometimes with work and travel I lose track of the threads as well.

But alas, I finally got home earlier - like when it's still daylight!!! So I decided to take a stroll around the yard with my magnifying glass. I remembered seeing a Brazilian Skipper flitting around a few days when I'd leave to work - it was hanging around the cannas in the front yard so I scouted for skipper nests. Found several. Must say those are the UGLIEST caterpillars! Ugh!!! That see-through skin creeps me out. When you zoom in on them it looks like some alien slug out of the Star Trek!!!

~ Cat


This message was edited Aug 28, 2007 8:29 PM