Continued from:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/914832/
Amazing pictures everyone! If any of you just now visiting this thread, click the above link to see them! Feel free to chime in and contribute with us here in the "Daily".
We've had more butterflies here lately than we've had all year! Monarchs and Frits eclosing last week and this week. I took one batch to the school for the kids to watch and release.
This is one of the several I kept here...
It was pretty cool, but I put them out to bask in the Salvias. They were still sleeping there the next day. When it warmed up they flew away, one by one.
More Cloudless and Sleepy Orange Sulphurs have been dropping by...
And sweet lil Skippers
This one Sl. Orange digging in...
I built this little Chicken Coop for Tango and Tessla last week...
No sooner did I finish it and a Frit decided to climb up on it and pupate on the roofs edge, lol.
They are morphing all over the back yard. On the gazebo curtain, on planters... everywhere...
Now it's your turn. :-) Post your pics!
Debnes
Well I came home to find a dozen Queen caterpillars on milkweed that I received in trade about two weeks ago. I transplanted it into a large pot last weekend and there wasn't a single egg or caterpillar on it!!! Now there are a bunch of last instar cats on it and they have eaten it to the bare stem! I swear there must have been a line of caterpillars marching through my back yard while I was at work today!
I moved them all to another milkweed I had growing under the tangerine tree. That should hold them for a couple more days. If they don't pupate soon I'll move them to another plant I have in the back yard.
~ Cat
Those Queens are always getting to my milkweeds. As soon as I get some going, the next time I look, they are just stems. I see you are gonna have the same problem. : )
~Lucy
Lovely pics! I’ve lurked a bit over here, but don’t know all that much about butterflies (although I’d love to learn :-) ).
The monarchs are starting to arrive here in California. I took these pics last weekend at Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz, CA. They aren’t very good quality pics, as my point and shoot camera just can’t capture them up so high in the trees…but hopefully you’ll get the idea. I hope to go back again soon, when more monarchs have arrived.
another:
Sunnyg...way cool on those Monarchs!!! Thanks for posting those. We get to see the Monarchs as they are migrating through to Mexico as well.
So true Lucy, so true.
I'd forgotten how voracious they are. I usually concentrate on raising the uncommon and smaller butterflies so only have two or three milkweed plants in my yard as I don't want to attract too many Queens. They hummingbirds enjoy the milkweed blossoms so they are planted mainly for them.
The Queens are very abundant here and the more you plant the more they come! I'd seen only a couple of caterpillars during the year - but this batch more than made up for it. May end up taking them to the park on Saturday - there is plenty of milkweed there.
On a good note...about 20 of my Forbes Silkmoth caterpillars have pupated. I separated the twigs with cocoons on them and moved them to a separate cage. The rest should start forming cocoons this coming week. Then it's just sit back and baby sit them until they emerge as gorgeous moths to continue the cycle. Here's a photo of one.
~ Cat
This message was edited Oct 30, 2008 9:20 PM
another branch with butterfly "leaves"
Thanks Cat, they are pretty neat to see, especially in those numbers! They’ll stay here until spring, and have only just begun to arrive. I remember visiting the Monarch Butterfly Natural Preserve at Natural Bridges as a child, and not being able to see the Eucalyptus leaves because they were so full of butterflies :-).
One thing I've always thought was odd about the Queen cats is that some seem to hide so well, sometimes leaving the plant to hide from predators. Maybe those cats were just good at hide-and-go-seek!
Nice pic of the Queens there Cat. The more MW I plant the more Monarchs I get....bring'em on!!!
Sunnyg...I would love to see the orange leaves in person. Thanks for sharing your pics!
AHA!!! I went out to get some leaves for the Polydamas cat I have in a cage and took a gander at the stripped milkweed plant on my back porch. I found another late instar cat on it! I know I moved every single cat from it to another plant a good 20 feet away. Have no idea where it crawled over from. Oh well, moved that bugger over to join its other twelve buddies. Now I have a baker's dozen!!!
~ Cat
LOL! Sneaky little buggers!
Wow, Cat! How I would love to see that many Queens around here. Next year we hope to have a whole bed of milkweed plants. We will plant it, so they'd better come!!! ;)
Today was a banner day for the butterflies... birds, too. I have to admit I am guessing at the identities of some, so if I'm wrong, please let me know.
The first and one I am most excited about, is the Zebra Longwing. I've seen it once before but couldn't get a picture of it. First it landed up in the peach tree...
then worked its way down through the perennial garden
Not sure of this one... Long Tailed Skipper?
nor this one... Buckeye?
Know this one.. American Lady
This one I'll definitely need your help on. It has gossamer wings and a pom-pom-like appendage on its rump that it waves about. Never have seen the likes of it! Tiny little thing, too.
There were at least six Gulf Frits flitting about rousting the skippers - or vice versa - off the Buddlea flowers
A very small skipper-like moth (?) that had vertical parts to its wing. This one was yellow, but I saw a white one and a brown one. No idea as to the identity.
And I'll end with my favorite ZL shot. Thanks for looking.
Barb....the one with the pompom butt is a Melon Moth :o) We get those out here. Pretty cool to watch it shake its booty!!! ROFL!!!
Good id'ing on all the others too. Wish I could send you a few hundred Queens...we get them by the thousands in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
~ Cat
Oooo pretty bj, super nice pics. Thx for sharing.
Hi Sunny, nice too see the Monarchs are arriving. They truly the sun comin' and goin'. Keep us posted. :)
Cat! A bakers dozen! Yaay! Cheers to all those Queens too!
Shake, shake, shake. Shake, shake, shake! Shake your booty! Love that pompom moth!
I had tons of butterflies when I came home today. I got to leave work early so it was about 3pm when I pulled in. I counted one Polydamas, three Gulf Frits, and at least five Long-Tailed Skippers along with some other skippers. Mom saw a sulphur as well.
Here's a skipper dining on the porterweed. Actually, all the butterflies were on the porterweed...as usual.
This message was edited Oct 31, 2008 10:34 PM
I liked the looks of this guy.
He was in the center of the shot but the wind kept blowing the porterweed around.
Gulf Frit getting in on the action. Three of them kept chasing each other around. The blue in the background is my front door.
Long-Tailed Skipper in front of the glass block of the main bathroom. I had never seen so many of these at once in my yard. I'm going to have to check the host plants around the area and see if I have any caterpillars.
Melanie
Mellie...hope you find those Long-tailed skipper cats. I had some last year on my blue pea vine but I was too busy to raise them. Now that I want to raise them they haven't touched the vines this year :o(
~ Cat
I had some on my Cherokee Wax beans and they also use the desmodium (tick trefoils) down by the road. They seem to have a high mortality rate as I lost a bunch when they were little. We had some at the museum as well this year. We ran out of beans and so I had to get the book out and see what else I could use. Luckily, I knew what desmodium looked like and found some growing in the woods behind the museum. I think it has pretty flowers, but those seeds sure do stick to our sock, jeans, etc. I generally see two of the Long-Tailed skippers at a time, but there were so many today!
Melanie
Fabulous pics, Mellie! The second and third pics... that one is like the yellow one I saw in my yard. Can you ID it, please? I thought it was prolly in the Skipper family, but wasn't sure.
The largest of my GST cats has pupated. Yea!!! Now if I can stand the wait until it ecloses...
;)
Barb
Help, my Butterfly Friends:
We are currently having low temps here, with frost most nights. A week or so ago I brought in some passion vine cuttings and put them in my kitchen window. Today I happen to glance at them; they were riddled. Lo and behold I found two Gulf Frits. They are healthy, but I don't have enough passi to feed them to maturity. Further, it would be freezing when they should be released. I feel the most humane thing to do is to place them back on the pitiful passi left outside. What do you think?
Martha
GF cats seem to have more resistance to cold than most cats around here. I have P. caerulea (among other passies), which will usually keep foliage over the winter, so the only thing limiting the GFs is the cold winter, since I don't normally take GFs in. It takes more than light freezes to completely stop them, from my experience. But eventually, the population does taper off and disappear. We get lows down to at least 20 or so here...sometimes into the teens on occasion.
