I hope you have a glorious day!
Sharon
Happy Birthday Deb!
I am sure this wish was for Debnes! Hope you have a great Cake-Day Deb!
Happy Birthday Deb!!
Have a lot of fun with you butterflies and plants.
Josephine.
Happy Birthday to the mother of the "Butterfly Whisperer"! LOL!
Happy Birthday to a wonderful DG friend! You have done so much to promote butterfly gardening, raising and releasing butterflies & moths, and just being the kind of person we ALL want to know and come to love! May your day be as special as YOU are! Wishing you the best that life has to offer! May you get those rare butterflies and plants that you are dreaming of!
Happy Birthday dear friend! I hope you have many, many more to come!
~Becky~
Hope you have a wonderfully happy birthday Deb!
Cathy
~Happy Birthday, Deb~ : )
Lucy
Deb, wishing you the very best today, Happy Birthday
Jackie
Enjoy your day. You are very special to me. Thank you for showing me the butterfly way.
Wow, Thanks guys!!
Getting me all choked up here... It is definitely a great day to find all of you wonderful people here with your well wishes! To share it with you is the icing on my cake!
Bless ya all!
debnes
I just saw this!
Happy Birthday Deb!
Happy B-Day --
Thanks for all your great post thru-out the year!!!!!
Here's to another great year ahead.
Paul
Happy Birthday Deb. Hope you had a wonderful day
Hope you had a flowery, butterfly, sunny day
Elaine
Deb...sorry I left the house at 7am and didn't get back until 11pm. Finally logged on and just noticed this thread....do hope you had a great birthday!!!
~ Cat
Thanks for the well wishes, the nice words, and the pretty butterfly pictures everybody!!
You guys are the best!
debnes
Happy belated birthday Deb! I hope you had a wonderful day!
Adrienne
Happy belated Birthday, Deb!!!! Dec 1st is my brother's birthday. He just turned 50 ... I hope your birthday was happier than his! ;-)
Carla
Carla I think the butterfly in your picture is a Thoas Swallowtail which is very rare around here. Did you take the picture? If so, you are a very lucky lady, it is beautiful.
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species?l=1365
Hey thanks everybody!!! I don't mind the belated wishes.. Looks like my birthday last more than 3 days so far rofl!! I love it! Carla your brother is exactly one year older than me, :-) And it was the bestest ever!!
Hi Josephine... I have to show y'all a couple pics regarding Carla's pic there. Been here before.
Here is another pic of Thoas: http://www.dallasbutterflies.com/Butterflies/html/thoas.html
They are very similar to the GST for sure. In the field they are extremely hard for even the best leps to distinguish in the field. I think this pic of Dale Clark's (above link) is more accurate than the bamona pic in this case. We can ask Cat for a third opinion too. Thoas is very rare even in South TX, Subsequent sitings based on bamona pic might have actually had Giant ST...
Check this pic of one of one laying eggs here in the yard back in mid July:
http://pics.davesgarden.com/pics/debnes_dfw_tx_1184155693_631.jpg
I know it's a ventral view, but you can see in the back-light~ a middle bar across the 2 wings looks just like Carla's pic
Not trying to be a wet blanket, it's just that we have had this question before. I might need to contact the girl at bamona and show her Dale's picture, and maybe one of Cat's too. :-S
Will ask Cat to be sure
Yes you are right but the bar across the top wings sure is different, it will be good to find out for sure. It does say that they stray into Oklahoma and Kansas.
Yep that keeps us guessing sometimes... I have seen some with that prominent bar and some that blended into the slim triangle. Things that make ya go humm..
:-)
I have one from 2006 that shows the dorsal side in simular position as the earlier photo. I was sure betting back then it was a Thoas too, but it was shot down as a GST! LOL!
Excellent pic Sheila!! What do you think about the bamona site pic? Should we contact them?
Happy belated birthday Debnes.
Kim
I am not confident enought to approach anyone on that. I had researched it in 2006 and it was so confusing to me then, and still is.
Wy thank you Kim!!
Beautiful Great Egret pic too!
Much as we'd like to see a Thoas - it my belief that this is a GST. I've never photographed a Thoas and could be wrong...but the markings just don't justify it being a Thoas.
The forewing band on a Thoas forms a clean straight line. The markings on the hind wings is also more pronounced as a chevron or arrow marking - which are more like an Ornythion's. However, the Ornythion's two bands of yellow markings remain separate until they reach the tip of the forewing (an Ornythion also has black tails with no yellow on the topside).
Our local NABA site has a gallery of swallowtails for easier comparison. You can see the three species side by side and you can click on each individual photo for a better look as well as various different photographs.
http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabast/galleryswallowtails.html
Hope that helps clear it up.
~ Cat
This message was edited Dec 4, 2007 2:58 PM
Well here's how daft I am -- I have never even looked at a Thoas! I always thought any big black/yellow butterfly was a Giant. Thanks, Josephine, for bringing this to our attention. From now on I will pay more attention.
Butterflies are SOOOOO hard to ID!
Carla
Well it looks like i was wrong, but I had never seen a gst with that wide solid bar extending down close to the body. Mine all looked like this;
Yep it's hard and challenging.... I guess I like that sort of thing, or I wouldn't be in the field I'm in, lol! I don't ever think of it as anyone being wrong, just not concluded or confirmed...yet.:-) We all help each other as a team.
On the GST, that extra short bar through the middle is attached to the lower wing, and sometimes it appears unusual. It made me second guess when I first saw one like that too.
Thanks Cat!! Your a big help. So many people come through the threads and we need to either have things right or in the process of getting it right. It's all good!
debnes
Ah, I have learned much from everyone on this forum as well. Will admit I've overlooked rare Ornythion butterflies here thinking they were just Giant Swallowtails. Have also overlooked other butterflies too - simply because I am not familiar with the butterflies from Mexico and Central/South America that sometimes make their way to south Texas.
Am sure I'll still make mistakes...but now I just keep in mind that whenever I see a butterfly that doesn't quite look right - to make sure I take lots of photos and hop on the internet to research it. When all else fails I always contact our local NABA guy or other well know butterfliers from my area.
If any of you think you have a rare butterfly sighting by all means send a photo in to the main NABA website and ask for a positive ID from Jeff Glassberg. www.naba.org
If you plant it, they will come...and you just never know what rare or uncommon butterfly or moth you'll see!!!
~ Cat
ps...am still waiting for an Atala Hairstreak to find its way from south Florida to south Texas!!! Got a couple of coonties planted in anticipation :o)
pss...remember we get some 300+ species down here and our south Texas NABA site has some really good photographs. Please feel free to make use of it for comparing butterflies.
http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabast/
This message was edited Dec 4, 2007 7:40 PM
Cat - LOL! about the Atala Hairstreak! I heard that we briefly had a colony of them in Vero Beach which is part of my stomping ground locally. I never saw them, but there must have been eggs on the coonties that were used in several large landscaping renovations here and that's how the colony started. Unfortunately, they died out and haven't been seen since locally. :-( But ya just never know! :-) I, too, thought about planting some coonties just in case! ;-)
Cat, I have a couple of coonties. also. I'm trying to coax the Atala Hairstreak up to me in central FL. Then, they can fly over to you. : )
~Lucy
Hi everyone, I had this beauty in my garden this summer, could you help me I.D. as to what it's? I'm dying to know.
Thanks,
Kim
Looks like an Eastern tiger swallowtail. : )
~Lucy
Lucy, those seem to have enjoyed my Pentas' nectar. By any chances anyone knows what's is its host plant? Thanks for the I.D. ETTST I just love those colorful pattern. :-)
Kim
This is what was in my book for host plants.
Pop Ash and White Ash in the Olive family. Sweet Bay and Tulip tree, in the Magnolia family, and Wild Cherry in the Rose Family.
~Lucy
Thank you Cat!! Same sentiment, we have to check and double check a lot don't we?
Hey Kim! Nice pic of the TST! It's a male too. Females have a lot of blue on the lower dorsal wing, and there is a dark form female that is transparant black with the same blue on the lower dorsal wing. With backlight you can see the tiger stripes.
Lucy covered all the host plats good too, :-)
Becky you really oughta get some coonties and give it a whirl! If I can plant pawpaw you can plant a coontie, who knows??
debnes
Did I neglect to mention I also have tried growing cherry trees to lure those Eastern Tiger Swallowtails to south Texas? Needless to say, since we don't have a winter/dormant period those trees just can't take our south Texas heat.
Bummer...because that is one heck of a GORGEOUS butterfly, Kim!!!
Lucy, you just hand those Atalas a map when you see some...same goes for you too Becky...since they are from your stomping ground :o)
~ Cat
ps...speaking of PawPaws...bought several from an online nursery. They are barely hanging in there...I have kept them in the shade. Hopefully our mild winter will make them feel better than our 100+ degree Summers.
This message was edited Dec 4, 2007 9:15 PM
Mine has fared okay for now.. It's making some really pretty leaves and going straight up. I will take a pic of it tomorrow. It's under a tree on the south side of the house.
I hear ya about the cherry trees, I hope we have enough winter for them to do alright. Thanks to Chris I have 2 more of them now. I have a Salix Willow, and a Sweet Bay from Cordeldawg, :-) ...for a back up. I had hundreds of these butterflies in the yard this year. Just one set of eggs and I blew it and a predator got to the itty bitty cats.
Next year I hope to do better.
debnes