Hello fellow gardeners. I have a problem. I've purchased several nectar plants and host plants for my butterfly garden. All has been going well. My garden has attracted several butterflies, not many, but we now are getting butterflies, where a couple of months we had never seen one fly past our yard. I had two Scarlet Milkweeds. I found several chewed up leaves a couple of weeks ago, and decided to take a closer look. Upon inspection, to much of my surprise, I found 8 caterpillars chumping on the foliage. I was elated. My kids took pictures, we were enjoying them everyday, as they ate up the leaves. They ate so much, that I bought a bigger Scarlet Milkweed for them to eat up. One morning I came out and all the caterpillars were gone. I looked and looked, they were nowhere to be found. As I glanced around the ground, a huge bufo toad with a rather bloated belly was under the Milkweed. I thought caterpillars had no predators. I am pretty sure the toad ate up all the caterpillars. Living in South Florida we have lots of toads during the summer, I don't know how to prevent this from happening again. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions as to what I can do? I feel so bad that those caterpillars were devoured by the toad. My kids were bummed to say the least.
8 Caterpillars gone.
sounds like they went off the make their chrysalis. Look around other nearby plants and see if your see any. They take about 14 days to eclose then you will have more butterflies. This one got on the side of a plant container
here is on on the milkweed though they normally leave the host plant
They could've wandered off to pupate?
If they were still young instars you might try putting some type of barrier around the milkweed? Sort of like tube made of chicken wire or broadcloth wire??? The caterpillars would stay on the plant until they are ready to wander off to pupate.
Other than that perhaps you can put the caterpillars into a cat cage and raise them instead of leaving that up to Mother Nature. As you know, only 2% of all the eggs a butterfly lays will make it to adulthood. So if we raise the caterpillars and release them back as healthy adult butterflies we've upped the odds :o)
Toss the toad over the fence? Get a snake? Put a bell around the toad's neck? Oh wait, that won't work...the caterpillars wouldn't even know the toad was coming :o)
~ Cat
This message was edited Jul 9, 2007 10:31 PM
I have looked and looked, Donna, I at first also thought that they were ready to make their chrysalis. It is just strange that overnight all caterpillars were gone, with a large toad just hanging out under the plant. Cat, lol, the snake idea sounds great, just don't need to add snakes to my yard, it already is a jungle. :) Tossing the toad over our fence won't help, we have way too many toads, I'd be tossing them out the yard all day...blah.
This morning I found two rather small caterpillars on the Milkweed. New caterpillars...:)
Cat, maybe I can place a screen or mesh of some sort to prevent uninvited visitors. I like that suggestion. Oh and thanks Donna for the pictures...I'll update, thanks..
Buggy