Gathered a few cats to safety...

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.

Here are the other 2 PVST cats...

Gotta love all those PVS and BST cats.

Am curious...your PVS eat aristolochia elegans??? They won't touch the stuff out here...but will quicky chow down on a. fimbriata.

What amazes is me is how often I find pipevine cats on the move at the ranch. They stand out with their bright orange coloring! I see them crawling across the dirt roads, up trees, the fence posts, the barbed wire fence. Guess if they didn't taste so bad to critters I wouldn't see them as often...but am sure some have been killed by a bird or lizard who hasn't had a bad experience with yet.

~ Cat

The above PVST cats were oviposited around the first few days of May, finally found them today after checking the plant regularly.

The BSTs will have to post when they get bigger. Looks like all 3 are a few days apart in age. They are presently too small and hard to get a good pic of though.

:-D

Yeah Cat! I bet you do see a lot of them.. and I still think they are visually impared. They lumber along using those antennae with every step of every leg and proleg. The mother laid the eggs on the elegans, I happened to see it... I had macrophylla growing out there there too, but she still preferred to lay them on elegans. This is the first batch I've taken in from my own backyard plants. (The ones I adopted were already near pupation, now expected to eclose first week of June, or so).
Now I have some small seedlings of tomentosa and trilobata. I would like to see more growth on them before they are introduced.

:-D