Went out this a/m to do my usual butterfly chase and caught these 2 acting weird. These were 2 different kinds of butterflies, yet one of them was doing a fluttering dance really close to the other one. They never made contact though. Then there were even several others that came fluttering close to it while it was dancing, but then they went on. Could it be that these 2 were fixing to mate?
Yeah looks like a pheromone spreading dance :)
Aren't these 2 gulf frittarlies?
Both of them are Gulf fritillaries. The one doing the fluttering is the male trying to pursuade the female on the ground to let him have some fun with her.
If you have Maypop around, that's where the eggs will be laid.
I see this all over my yard, especially since I have allowed Passiflora Incense to overrun the back. It attracts the Gulf Fritillary and they seem to produce several generations each summer.
Mollybee, it's called flirting when humans do it. Don't know what butterflies call it, but whatever it is, it's courtship.
WOW! I guess I just learned something new! How neat is this!! :) I just love DG folks.
Thanks for the help.
Soon, you should see lots of orange and black caterpillars in the area. Protect them, don't let anyone kill them. They will chomp away on some passiflora or other plant (mine seem to like a wide variety) and then attach themselves to places like eaves, leaves and anything handy. A little blackish object with a slight curve to the lower end will hang there for a couple of weeks, I think, although I am not good about keeping track of time, and then one morning a lovely new butterfly will emerge and start it all over again.
I just found 4 baby cats on my butterfly weed(same one in the pic above) but they are yellowish green with black stripes on them. I don't have any passifloras though. Do the cats consume a lot of the leaves from the plant they are on?
I'm actually excited!
Sometimes they will strip the passiflora vine. I know it bothers some people, and if I was in a more urban setting it might be a problem, but I just consider that my garden is as much for wildlife as for me. My fruits are damaged by birds, wasps, racoons, possums, squirrels and all sorts of critters. I am okay with that, and with the tattered leaves left behind by caterpillars. What I am not okay with is fire ants and grasshoppers and mosquitoes. They don't turn into anything beautiful, they just up my misery quotient. I know, the ants aerate the soil and consume other dead insects, so I allow them a little grace, but the hoppers and skeeters have yet to convince me that they have a single redeeming virtue.
So, little cats, chomp away, you are welcome to my vines.
