Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Gathered a few cats to safety..., 1 by debnes_dfw_tx

debnes_dfw_tx wrote:
Today, as every day, I went on patrol to see if there were any cats out on the host plants. I managed to find 3 tiny Black Swallowtails on the Parsley and 4 Pipevine STs on Aristolochia elegans. I know there should have been more BST's, but how can a smart bird resist those cats? I was happy to find the three, and still looking.

The PVST cats are twice as big as when I put them in the cage now with another larval host.. A. fimbriata. A couple look more redish, but I'm sure they are all PVSTs. They were in 2 pairs on the plant where I found them in the back yard. The clusters are smaller than those of the usual gregarians. So you will sometimes see the survivors of post instar, paired up or in smaller groups than that of, say, Bordered Patch. The biggest one is about 1cm to date.

No, the one isn't eating the other... they just overlap sometimes, lol. They later separated out on the new plant.