LOL! I can just see snuzer's butterfly asking...how much could I make as a butterfly supermodel? Very cool pics, BTW!
DAILY BUTTERFLIES Page 39
Nice collage of pics snuzer!
Love all your pictures together, Snuz. : ) What program do you use for that? Is it free?
~Lucy
Hey Elaine, I'm hoping to get some seeds from the passionvine I have, but if not, I'll probably ask you for a couple!! I think our pal Sandy would like to try it too, one afternoon when she came over to walk my little dog while we were up in Columbia, I had her check out the gulf frit cats on my plant; she was pretty amazed. Of course if she gets into raising cats, that will give me another chore to do when she and Charlie go on their trips!
Thanks Everyone! I use Adobe Photo Shop 7.0. We bought it a long time ago. I don't know how to use all the features the program has, but can put together a few things now and then! I also plan to make a collage of the photos of the other butterfly that I protected-- Maybe tonight or tomorrow. Then you can tell me if I am correct in assuming the first one was a male and the second is a female.--Sue
Blueglancer, You can do that same collage with Picasa2. : )
Ok, I'll look into that, Meredith. Thanks alot. : )
~Lucy
Well, I'm on vacation next week in West Virginia so y'all will have to live without me for a little while. I'm rounding up all the critters to take to MOSI so they'll have a good home (except the Zebra STs - grandma has pawpaw trees in her yard). Whatever laid eggs on the milkweed - probably Monarchs but we do get Queens here - has hatched and begun eating. So I expect to come back and have little stubs where there was once milkweed. They even found the plants that I had hidden in the corner. Actually, I threw some milkweed seeds out there a few months ago, forgot what they were, and only figured it out recently once they got tall enough. They haven't even bloomed yet and I've already got eggs on them!
I also started my first veggie garden this year. Since it was late spring I only tried a few plants to kind of figure out how I was going to do this. With all the recent rain, my beans have resprouted with a vengeance. Of course, this meant that Long-Tailed Skipper in my yard wasn't just looking for nectar. Check out the caterpillar I found!
These skipper eggs defy gravity! These are the first eggs I think I've seen that are stacked. I know many butterflies lay them that way; I just hadn't seen it before.
Dad was bad and mowed down my Maypop so he has been severely chastised. I know it will come back, but I was already thinking about how slow it had been growing and when will it explode, etc. Luckily, I still have my p. lutea and today I found my first egg on it! It's more yellow so I'm hoping the Zebra Longwings got away from the porterweed long enough to lay some eggs..
While I was out there I had a visitor to the plumbago. Dad said, "That looks like the one we released yesterday", to which I replied, "It may very well be."
Melanie
Melanie, thanks for mentioning the red glop that the Polydamas produce when they eclose. I have my first 4 Polydamas chrysalids, and if I hadn't seen your picture, I would have worried something was wrong with them they pop out! Great show and tell!
Here's one of the cats day before yesterday. Now there are two on the same branch. I was trying to let them do their thing on the Pipevine, but the wasps were so bad that I ended up bringing a bunch of cats in.
Cathy
It's been a while since I posted, but seems like I've had a bunch of interesting things in the last few days! Here are some fuzzy pics of EBS, the first made a nice dark brown chrysalis on a rusty metal chair.
Another made a pretty green one right on the fennel plant.
This morning was the third day in a row that I've seen this giant frass right next to where I park my car.
I posted this on another thread but she is so pretty I will post her here too.
I've been trying to find the culprit- finally, today I found him!
A little closer
Heavinscent- beautiful shot!
Here's the big cat with a ruler, nearly 4 inches. I think it is a Ficus Moth, it's on a Ficus lyrata.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/go/1445/
Hopefully someone can confirm it.
Thank you! Its the first I have seen in my yard this year.
Is it a Giant Swallowtail?
I almost forgot, one more nice surprise this morning.
I think this is a White Peacock? I got some of the Bacopa, I think that's what it was, from the water plants Coop earlier this spring (thanks for the suggestion beckygardener!), and I'm hoping maybe it is a she and she will lay some eggs!
Here is a photo collage of the Black Swallowtail that came out of its chrysalis on July 6. After working with the pictures, I am not so sure it is a female. Perhaps it is really another male.
That's a White Peacock! We have bacopa in the little water feature at MOSI and last weekend there were all these stems with little WP cats clinging to them. I grabbed as many as I could, but I had to kneel on the rocks and lean over to the little stream so I wouldn't smush the plants. I'm sure the guests walking by were like, "What is that girl doing?" LOL!
Cool, thanks Melanie! I will get on all fours tomorrow morning and do a bacopa inspection!
snuzer, that is a lovely collage. I just downloaded Picasa, maybe I can figure it out!
Im sorry! Yes, It's it a Giant Swallowtail
Caren
Thanks, sv!
I'm about ready to throw in the towel as a surrogate butterfly mom, things just haven't gone well this season. First, I've found very few BST cats at all, my dill and parsley are all drying up and yellowing before they even got the chance to be butterfly hosts, and now the one GF cat I brought in to raise is dying. I thought last night, when he started wandering, that he was a bit small to quit eating, and now this morning he's lying on the floor of the crate, his back end all shrivelled, and I thought he was dead. I tried touching a bit of the passionvine leaf to him and he moved a little, but he's just lying there. Doesn't look good. I'm SO disheartened!!!
It' ok thea....I had a similar problem when I started this year. All 4 of my guf frit cats failed to pupate correctly and died, and then my monarch cats croaked, the one that did pupate ok didn't eclose right, and all of the pipevine cats I found died because I had the wrong pipevine to feed them. However, I did have several BSTs that finally made it ok and have now released 14. So please don't give up....sometimes nature is just beyond our control! Are you sure your frit cat isn't shedding his skin? They quit eating I think when they do that.
:) Kim
I'm so sorry that your cat isn't doing well. Believe me, I've been there...many times. Remember, only 2 % survive outdoors without any intervention to live out their full lives. Raising them in containers gives much better results, but not all are going to make it. About parsley, most of my Italian parsley tends to go to seed and look a bit straggly in summer, but it will be back...I cut that perennial parsley back and wait. I also have some native annual wild parsley which looks better in the summer for a while...until it also goes to seed also and eventually it'll be gone, but reseeds. Fennel and Rue is an alternative in the summer. The only dill I have is a native wild dill, which does a little better in summer heat than garden dill, but eventually seeds out and is gone. I haven't had a single BST cat this year...guess the BST all went to areas that weren't in such a severe drought. We finally did have some good rain in the last week, so we'll see what happens...whether we just go back to severe drought.
Thank you Kim and Linda! I was hoping it was as you said Kim, that he was just trying to shed his skin, but he's just not moving at all, I think he's gone. I'm going to try fennel and rue next year Linda, I wish I'd done it this year! I dug an herb garden thinking it would do well in that spot, but the heat has just been so intense and the rain so minimal (but like you, we've gotten a good bit of rain this past week), everything that survived is pretty much yellowing and drying up. I had SO many BST cats last year, all summer into the fall. So far this summer, I've only found 9, and won't find more if my parsley and dill go kaput!!!
Gosh Thea,
I remember last year you were inundated with BST's. You could hardly come to the forum you were so busy with them. Sorry to hear you are not having much luck this year. I have done pretty well with my BST's this year, a couple did not make it and now am working on gulf frits. So far so good but it is just so devastating when one of the little guys doesn't make it. It is hard not to get upset about it. Keep your chin up and keep trying. Good luck to you girl.
Leslie
Gulf Frits can be hard to raise. Even at MOSI we usually just let them do their own thing because raising then in captivity can be hit or miss. Plus, there's usually so many flying around we just catch them and put them in the flight cage.
I have to say go with the fennel for sure if you want BSTs. I have fennel, dill (which is really brown and wilty right now) and parsley. My fennel has eggs but they ignore the other plants. In all fairness, they've been laying eggs on the parsley at MOSI, but I don't think we have fennel there - at least I haven't found any yet.
Melanie
Melanie....tell me again what the MOSI stands for. I know you said, but I am old and forget! LOL!
Thea...sorry for the lack of BSTs and the impending loss of the GF. I lost a lot of cats the first part of the season, when they finally showed up. Now, it seems to go in batches. Especially when I fail to bring them in after the first few days. If I miss them, and they are an inch or more then it is that batch that dies, or I find have been parasitized. After I got going this year and began thouroughly checking the plants, it seems my rate is picking up.
I remember Debnes saying she had given up on a few chrysalis and gave them to a teacher to use as an exhibit with Ben's class. A few weeks later, the teacher said a bf emerged from one of them! So none of us are experts and never are we in control. Sometimes things just aren't to be, you tried your best.
Don't pull up your parsley, mine overwintered even with snow on it. mulch around it and cover it if the temps are below freezing. It grew to about 3 foot tall this year!
No problem...it's the Museum of Science and Industry. I'm leaving for West Virginia in the morning to visit Grandma (and the butterflies up there) for a week. If you guys haven't checked out this thread, we have a DGer who is raising Black ST for the first time so please help out with all of your expertise: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/875506/
Melanie
thea, I'm sorry to hear about your tough time with the cats. Sometimes Nature is so harsh. I raised a bunch of Monarchs in the early spring and had a good success rate. About a week after the last one was released, I was cleaning out my lanai and found a beautiful Monarch butterfly that had emerged from its chrysalis, only to wander into a spider's web behind the table. I was so mad, and sad! I know spiders have to eat too, but really!
Hope things turn around for you soon.
Melanie, hope you have a great vacation with your Grandma and the WV butterflies!
Cathy
Mellie, have a wonderful time and take lots of pictures.. I know you will.
Thea, so sorry about the cats. I don't raise any inside, yet. I do try to kill the wasps around my Passion vine.
Cathy, that was a bummer to find the Monarch in spider web. You know, I guess that's why they lay so many eggs.
Mellanie, have a nice vacay!
I've seen butterflies in the yard every sunny day but have not been able to get pictures of them. The reason is that they are always flying around and not stopping for very long. I see TSTs a few times a day and usually a fritillary at least once. Today I finally had one on the flowers long enough to get a photo. The poor thing is quite battered up, but still a beauty.
Meredith, those are pretty flowers, too. What are they? Monardo/Beebalm?
Have a great trip, Melanie, see ya when you get back. : ) Take pictures. : )
~Lucy
Yes Lucy they are Monarda/Beebalm : ) I love them, I have a lot of different ones. They are so pretty this time of year, but in another month they will look terrible due to powdery mildew and the leaves falling off and I'll probably cut most of them back to the ground. I've been trying to plant stuff near them that can take over for them when they are cut back.
They are sooo pretty. I don't have any. I better look into getting some for my BF's. : )