DAILY BUTTERFLIES Page 72

We came from here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1042168/

Ok, part of me wanted to see how long you guys would keep a thread going, but over 200 posts is long enough. Plus, I want to show off my fabulous Florida butterflies!

My first Viceroy emerged! The second is still a cat. He seems confused. I think maybe he wants to overwinter (they are one that does so in the caterpillar stage) but he's a little big for that.

Notice the Viceroys in FL tend to take on the darker orange like the Queens. Double mimicry!

And here's a side view

I still have skippers by the dozens haunting the front of my house. I'm raising a Dorantes and yesterday found a Long-Tailed Skipper when I went to pick food.

They won't stay away from the porterweed. It's kind of fun to watch them chase each other in circles.

I'm still raising and releasing Monarchs. I hate to think how many I've picked up at the museum the last two weeks. I've even found two Queen caterpillars!

Sulphurs are still going strong - both Cloudless and Orange-Barred. They're still eating the flowers and making themselves hard to find. But still - I can hunt them and find them out!

And now to make everyone jealous - a Zebra Swallowtail came out this week. Actually, another one came out today but I was at work so Mom released him. Here's mine hiding in the plumbagos.

Side view - check out those tails! I always forget how long they are and then I get surprised when I see them.

And speaking of Zebras...the Longwings are still hanging around. I'm glad they're long-lived; we might actually keep some through the winter at the museum. This Sunday (the day I volunteer), the museum is having a special $5 admission day. So I'm going to head in early to make sure the caterpillars are all cleaned up and ready for display. Then, I figure I'll walk around with some and let people pet them. People love petting them; they're always so surprised at how soft and squishy they are. I just have to remember not to baby talk to the caterpillars in front of the guests, LOL!

Oh, and I just have to complain that one of the Toys R Us Black Friday deals was one of those stupid Painted Lady kits. Butterflies are not toys! And like I tell everyone at the museum, if you want to raise butterflies, go buy a packet of milkweed seeds (less than $2), plant them, and wait a few weeks for the plants to get big enough for the Monarchs to come. See, I just saved everyone money and helped the environment.

Don't want to end on a note of negativity, so check out my passiflora "Lavender Lady".

Melanie

Dang ya just had to show off that Zebra ST!!! Awesome!!!

I haven't seen a butterfly this week - it rained Monday and Tuesday and it has been in the 50's and 60's since then. Am loving the cold spell...but I sure do miss the butterflies.

The cannas have lots of caterpillars - so guess that's will have to do until the sun comes out again :o)

~ Cat

I like the Viceroy, Melanie...always wondered when I'd see the butterfly what it would be like to raise some. Zebra ST...they look very cool, but since they don't ever come here, I've never really thought about raising them. Nice pics!
Just wanted to add that I'm going to really miss the flowers that might go away if we get zapped too bad Friday night.

This message was edited Dec 3, 2009 8:54 PM

Thanks guys! It poured all day yesterday and it's supposed to rain again tomorrow and then be cold this weekend. Mom panicked and went out to pick some passion vine which ended up being nearly the whole plant. Because mowing it down twice this year just wasn't enough. It's amazing the thing has ever grown back. It's a p. caerulea by the way. Indestructible. I had to educate Mom on how we pick the runners before we pick the main plant. Mom doesn't exactly have a green thumb and doesn't really recognize most plants. I forget what weed she was trying to feed the cats one time - oh, I know! She had skunk vine in with the Frits. At least she tries. She starts her morning by feeding the Monarchs - isn't that sweet? I've got several just days away from pupating so you know how much they're eating!

Love your Viceroy Melanie!

Well it will be down to 30 and snow maybe. We had a dusting early yesterday morning but it melted quickly. I did look for the Monarch and Queen cats on MW and bring in the ones I could find. All pretty tiny right now, but I will have plenty to feed if my covering over a big stand of MW holds against the wind and cold. If not ....Cat you may get a box full of caterpillars for Christmas. LOL!

It got up above 40° today, so the "high" forecast was wrong again and so was the low last night...didn't even freeze. No snow, no rain, nothing, sun came out part of the afternoon. I checked the p-vines again, found a few more GF cats, I now have 3 containers of cats in my shed. I just don't understand why most of the cats were on the Incense p-vines. P. caerulea is the one that often has foliage over the winter here, but instead Incense was favored.

Love both of the zebras Melanie. They are both on my "wish list" to see.

Cat, what's on the cannas?

Melanie, you have amazing butterflies and pictures and you are a wonderful mom to all of them.
Josephine.

Awww...thanks everyone! Tonight I've had two Gulf Frits make their chrysalis and two Monarchs (although one got stuck and didn't make it). I'm going to take my Giant STs to the museum tomorrow since I have limited food for them and I want everyone to be able to appreciate them. They're always a favorite of the guests.

Speaking of the museum, they're running a special $5 day tomorrow (it's normally $19.95 for adults) so I anticipate a good crowd. I'm going to try to go in a little early so I can make sure everyone is clean and fed. It's pretty cool here (high of 68 tomorrow) so I'm hoping I can catch some butterflies basking in the sun. I tried with the Frits last week but they were just too fast. I did get a Monarch to crawl on my hand and I walked it right to the flight cage.

Since it should be cool tomorrow I'm hoping to just sit in the flight cage for a while and talk to the guests; I always enjoy that. I like to sit there with a few caterpillars so people can see them up close and touch them. The museum's mission is "to make science real" for the guests and I really try to do that by letting them get up close and personal with the caterpillars and butterflies.

Melanie

Melanie, does the museum still have a lot of MW? If so I want to ship about 10 cats to you. All my MW is mush after the below freezing temps. What I have inside is not going to be enough. LMK your addy in an dmail if you are willing.

Sheila, you don't have to do that, I have lots of milkweed in the garage, not the freshest but certainly edible. I can give you leaves if you like.
Josephine.

Well, I should have thought that over before I spoke, maybe you prefer to send them to the museum, which is perfectly fine with me, whatever you decide is just fine.

We brought in 10 monarch cats yesterday and this morning. It was sooooooo cold and miserable yesterday, as I was coming in from the barn walking past the milkweed I saw them. I hadn't really looked much lately, and there they were. I've still got Zebra's Longwings too. They are on my Passion flower Incense, which is potted so I moved it to a sunny place...still chilly here ( I just KNOW I'm going to get in trouble for this LOL ) in the 50's.
Still lots of Gulf Frits and some Long Tail Skippers, (they made a mess of my Blue Butterfly Pea vine !! oh), and Sulphers hanging around too...
I got two baby PawPaws...so maybe eventually I have Zebra Swallowtails that do more than come in for breakfast and lunch next year !

Thanks for the offer Josephine. These are so tiny right now, I am sure they will be eating for a while. I believe a few of my MW may have made it under buckets and etc. So I am going to dig them and bring them inside with hopes I can get them to chrysalis. By then, depending on the weather here, I may be forced to send them south to Cat or Melanie.

O.K. we shall see how it works out.

Mrs_Ed - Brazilian Skipper caterpillars are on the canna. Saw a couple of chrysalids but they look black...not sure they are viable. The Gulf Frits are on the passion vines too and they were cold to the touch. I moved stuff onto my backporch to keep it out of the wind - it has warmed up - was back into the high 70's today. Butterfly activity picked up but lots of the my plants got zapped by a freeze we had Friday night - no flowers to nectar from!!!

~ Cat

There's still plenty of milkweed at my house and the museum. In fact, I scooped up another dozen or so Monarch cats today. Oh, and someone found another Queen because there were two in the tank! We actually bought dozens of milkweed plants a few weeks ago and filled in a lot of empty patches. The aphids have found them too, but I'm working on that. And we've also had them using the Giant Milkweed so it's been Monarchs all around.

Lots of sulphurs, too! I found Cloudless and Orange-Barred today. All of them were found on the flowers. I finally started ignoring the leaves and just looked at the flowers. I think I found about eight all together.

Since it was cool and increasingly cloudy (unlike what the weatherman said) I actually got some nice shots of a couple skippers. How often do you see them slow down?

I won't pretend to know the IDs of the skippers; I can usually narrow it down to two or three, but then I end up arguing with myself.

I love the proboscis in this shot. Love my camera too - best birthday gift I ever bought myself. Did y'all notice I was a runner up in the photo contest? I only had a couple of months with my new camera to take photos so I didn't have too many really good pictures. But I figure next year I'll have a whole year's worth of photos and this time I'm determined to take the big prize!

Melanie

I figured you might have had a freeze down your way Cat.

That is a super shot Melanie, looks so pretty curled up like that.

If you will send your address by dmail and I will ship these off to you. I have about ten. They have already defoliated one plant and the other is very sparce. All the ones in the yard have wilted back despite my best efforts. If they were large cats, I would just feed what I had and let them go to chrysalis when the food was gone, but these are fairly small. I haven't looked too closely but they may be Queens in the bunch. I had them mating and laying eggs just a week before the freeze.

Warming up a little this weekend the butterflies will be out and hungry no doubt.

Melanie...The cats went off to you on Friday, so hopefully you got them Sat or definately will by Monday. I meant to pack them to mail on Thursday and forgot.
I hot glued a disc of the wrapped wet foam in the bottom of a small cage. I put all my viable MW in it and then taped the lid down. Then hot glued the cage to the bottom of a mailing box and added some packing to hold it in place. There are holes in the corners of the box and the cage has the material on front. Hope they made it. I believe I counted about 17 when I gathered them up.
I saw about 5 Queens in the bunch, could be more.

Mellie, I love your pictures!

Wow! that is going to be quite a surprise!!!

I thought this was a cool picture to share.

Today was a great butterfly day, warm sunny and plenty of activity. Here is a pic of my Queens roosting on Tabebuia. They used to roost ironically enough on my Queen palm which I had to relocate.They seem just as happy.

here is another view ended up with about a dozen fighting for the best spots.

Wow! that is neat, mine are gone now.

Dang Viceroy - you've got Queens. Funny how only a few weeks ago we had them here by the thousands - dratted weather of cold and dreary days... ugh!

~ Cat

Today was warm...finally! And there were butterflies, the first I've seen since the big freeze! I saw a couple of Red Admirals, so put out some old fruit, also a few snouts were around. And the little sulfur I saw found the only flowers left on the property...a wild aster that still had a few flowers that I hadn't noticed. I felt bad that those few were all the flowers left for the butterflies. All other blooming plants were zapped, and a lot of foliage was hanging down in tatters everywhere. I did have some plants I protected by putting them in the shed before the freeze, but none of them are blooming. I was too busy pruning things back today, so took no pics of the butterflies.

It is going to be a long three months, I miss the butterflies. But the plants need rest and flies, fleas and mesquitoes need to be terminated!

Whatcha talking about Willis?! Mosquitoes are the state bird of Texas!!!

I wish I could get rid of all of them too. Will tell you a funny story - strange but true. I have three dogs who use the doggy door to go in and out to the back yard. Their water bowl is inside the house. It's one of those self-feeding type - that has a three gallon jug of water inverted over a bowl.

Anyway, I don't take it out to clean until it's about empty - the water usually lasts a week. One day I kicked the bowl to see how much water was in the jug and I saw something wiggling in the bowl. Mosquito larvae!! UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some mosquito must have gotten inside the house and found the water bowl and laid eggs in it! Isn't that freaky?!!!

So now I check it daily and have added a little bit of bleach to the water jug. Any other suggestions? I don't want the dogs swallowing mosquito larvae.

~ Cat