This little guy (or gal) has become our family pet this week. We watched his mom, the neighborhood GS, lay the eggs and we have been shooing the birds away as we watch him grow and develop. He has a couple of healthy siblings also.
Ain't he cute????
Yes, very cute! I was lucky enough to find one a few days ago...I've been monitoring it's growth too. Since I've left it up to Mother Nature I must go looking around the tree to find it...but I've been blessed...it stays on the same leaf.
~ Cat
...and here's another two I found on the same leaf this morning. There is a tiny hatched egg on the right side too.
Now I find myself looking all over my citrus trees for 'bird poo' :o)
~ Cat
We get those from time to time on the lemon trees, I think they're so cute!
This guy was on my neighbor's lemon tree - she was so worried that her tree would be destroyed that we moved all the babies to a Poncirus trifolate (citrus rootstrock). Fortunately they have transferred very well; so far every one of them have lived. This is the second time we have done this in the past month. There seems to be an unusually high number of GS's in our area this year.
Got a question...does it matter what kind of citrus tree leaves these guys eat? I found three caterpillars on the tangerine tree...nothing on the orange or grapefruit trees. All the trees are full grown with about six feet between each.
Also, will this type of swallowtail cat eat rue? I have seen black swallowtail cats on my rue plants...but never the giant swallowtail cats.
Here's a photo of the black swallowtail cat on rue.
~ Cat
whats a gs??
trying to learn the differant catapillers and butterflys but dont know this one above.
GS = giant swallowtail
BST = black swallowtail
TST = tiger swallowtail
ZST = zebra swallowtail
GF= gulf fritillary
GSF = great spangled fritillary
...and so forth...those are some of the more common abbreviations so we don't have to type out the whole butterfly name
~ Cat
ps...anyone correct me if I'm wrong...or add more to the list :o)
Cat, I do not know if it is harmful in any way to transfer the caterpillars between the citrus trees but they seemed to handle it well and are all growing by leaps and bounds.
I read on a different thread where you should not transfer them from one type of plant (like citrus) to another (like rue) so I have avoided doing that.
I do not use any chemicals on my citrus and keep the trees well watered so the babies have lots of fresh, healthy green leaves to subsist on.
My neighbors think I am crazy to be coddling these poopy looking critters. LOL.
Ardesia - Thanks for the info. I just never see any chewed up citrus leaves and the cats are usually in the place. They are growing though...so they must be eating. Since all I've found so far are three...I don't want to lose them...but will leave it up to Mother Nature until I do more research on butterfly rearing cages and such.
~ Cat