Well, Melanie is doing the happy dance today! First off, I finally got a picture of a Spicebush Swallowtail! Ok, I got more than one.



So naturally, I had to go search for eggs and I found four! That was when the happy dance started. For research purposes, I'll note that the butterfly laid all four eggs on one Spicebush plant. Now, I have, planted literally in a row, a Sassafras tree (small), my healthy Spicebush with about 40 leaves, and the Spicebush I thought was dead but isn't with about 6 leaves. So the butterfly went for the healthy Spicebush. Kind of thought I might get an egg on the Sassafras, but nope. I guess they really like Spicebush more. As you can see, a lot of Swallowtails lay their eggs singly on the underside of the leaf.



Shoot, I just thought that I better check those Camphor trees that are coming up! They're invasive; I think the birds are pooping out their seeds under my oak tree because that's where they keep coming up. Spicebush STs will use them as a host but I have a theory that it's not as nutritious because I rarely find big cats on them.

Anyway, here's a Duskywing on its favorite Spanish Needles.



The Gulf Frits were being very bad today and didn't want their picture taken. But as I was literally opening the door to the garage I spotted this one just sitting on the passion vine. I thought it was weird but Dad said, "Maybe it had just come out." And sure enough, when I looked at the picture I saw the empty chrysalis just to the right of the butterfly. Duh! Score one for Dad on that one.



The whole reason I was outside was to pick more pellitory for my Red Admiral cat. These guys eat a lot for a caterpillar! I thought Polydamas and Monarchs were bad but this little guy is eating his weight in the stuff. Seriously, he has grown so much in two days it's blowing my mind. Here's a picture where you can kind of see the little yellow triangles on their otherwise all black body.



In bad news, I had to put down a Monarch today as it was stuck in its chrysalis which is kind of a classic sign of OE infection. My Queen chrysalis was also severely discolored so I threw it out, as well.

Dirtdorphins, that is a cool shot! Butterfly and shadow - neat!

Well, I went outside and Mom tagged along and we didn't find any Spicebush eggs on the Camphor seedlings. I have it on Dad's to-do list to pull those nasty, invasive things. On the plus side, Dad is a woodturner and a friend of his has this company called Viable Lumber that diverts trees from being taken to the dump and instead he sells the lumber to people who make wood crafts. Camphor is very good as a turning wood but the whole garage smells like Vicks Vap-O-Rub when Dad turns it. The butterflies usually start swarming the garage when he turns it, too - and not just the Spicebushes, either! And speaking of Spicebushes, they were still flying around on the pentas.



But the real excitement came when I found Pipevine ST eggs! Now, if you thought I was doing the happy dance before, this time I was practically in spasms! I know I'm about to contradict my previous post, but the Pipevine ST (and the Polydamas, for that matter) lay eggs in clumps along the stems. Occasionally, they'll lay just an egg or two but usually you find clumps. How do you tell the difference? Pipevine eggs are reddish-orange while Polydamas are yellow-orange. And it's important to know the difference! Why? Because pipevines come in different strengths. I grow Trilobed Pipevine, Wooly Pipevine, and Dutchman's Pipevine (it might even be the Giant one but it didn't come with a tag). Pipevine Swallowtails can only eat the non-tropical, native pipevines! But they will lay eggs on all of them! In this case, it laid all its eggs, barring one clump, on the way-too-toxic Dutchman's Pipevine. If the caterpillars eat it, they will die. And Pipevine STs don't have the greatest survival rates in the first place. So basically, growing pipevine comes with great responsibility! Check regularly to catch the eggs before they hatch. I did find one small clump of eggs that had hatched and no sign of caterpillars. Luckily, I saved the vast majority before they hatched. The last picture is the only clump I found on the Wooly Pipevine. FYI, I've never raised a Pipevine ST at home before. I take a little credit for the ones at the museum, but I've never done it on my own. Will this be the year?



So Mom and I continued our trip around the yard with the eggs in a tupperware dish. We were checking out the senna and I found a nearly full grown Cloudless Sulphur! He's living in my bedroom now. It's only one and he's almost grown so I figured I could care for him until he's a chrysalis. He's a little glowy in this picture - must have been the light.



So we made our way around the house but Mom had to go to the bathroom. So she went in and I continued because I forgot to pick some senna for my caterpillar to eat. On the way, I saw this Swallowtail in the butterfly garden and it was a Pipevine ST! And it found my Dutchman's Pipevine (again, the wrong one) and started laying eggs. I watched it for about 20 minutes and had to walk around each side of the fence collecting the eggs she laid. I also went in the house and fetched Mom so she could watch. Here are some of the better pictures I got. It was windy and I was facing the sun on one side of the fence so it was hard to get good shots. And if you look close in some of the pictures you can see the reddish-orange dots that are her eggs.






Now, in case you're wondering why I grow a non-native Pipevine (especially when I'm a native plant cheerleader), the truth is, I really don't want to. But last year I had all these Polydamas and nowhere near enough to feed them. So I went to my local nursery and asked if they could get Trilobed Pipevine but all they had was Dutchman's. So I bought it for the Polydamas. Honestly, the native ones don't grow nearly fast enough to feed the caterpillars, and I don't have room to plant tons of them. Besides, the more you plant, the more caterpillars you get anyway (milkweed and Monarchs, anyone?). And even as big as my Dutchman's Pipevine is right now, all it would take is one crazy Polydamas to come along and the caterpillars would eat it to bits and I'd have to take the refugees to MOSI (who has a garden big enough to grow lots of Pipevine). Most Swallowtails seem very careful about laying only enough eggs as the plant can support but the Polydamas are an exception. They go nuts. Conversely, the Pipevine STs hardly ever seem to lay more than a few eggs which is why getting so many today was so surprising. If they all hatch and live past a few days, I'm going to have to take some to MOSI because I have nowhere near enough to feed them. This will make my boss super happy as the Pipevine ST is her favorite butterfly. In fact, when I'm done posting here I'm going to go taunt her on Facebook.

The Pipevine ST finally took off and got a snack on the pentas and then on the Jatropha in front of my house. But a Spicebush ST was also eating in the butterfly garden. I'm pretty sure this is a different one than above because it was really big for a Spicebush. Like, noticeably bigger.



And for learning purposes, here's an egg on Passion Vine. It's probably a Gulf Frit egg even though it's really yellow (like a Zebra Longwing egg). I think it's just the light. Late afternoon sun does weird things to my camera.



The Gulf Frits have been acting weird today. They keep flying low right above a patch of lawn in the side yard and I can't figure out what they're doing. There are no flowers there. They usually don't fly too close to the ground unless they're looking for a host plant or basking. It's kind of weird. Here's one of the Gulf Frit caterpillars on my passion vine. There's a bunch of them on there! Glad I enjoyed the blooms while I could!



And in case you're wondering how many Pipevine eggs I got - here's a look! I didn't want to take a chance of them eating the Dutchman's Pipevine so I scraped the eggs off with my fingernail - you can do this, just be careful! I have a leaf of Trilobed Pipevine in the tupperware for when they hatch. We also grow the Trilobed Pipevine at MOSI and that's what we use to feed the Pipevine STs when we have them.

When I woke up this morning, four of the Pipevine STs had hatched. That's the first step to being a successful butterfly so hooray!

I didn't mean to stay at MOSI very long but I ended up there for three hours. Mostly I was just talking to people so it wasn't too high-impact. We had a pretty good crowd for Sunday morning. Lots of interesting people, too. There was a "holistic" (her word) lady who loved our medicinal garden which is planted in our Historic Tree Grove under the Clara Barton Redbud tree (she founded the Red Cross). I also talked to a lady whose father researched and helped preserve habitat for the Florida Scrub Jay which is endemic to Florida. There's been a push lately to get it named the official state bird (instead of the Mockingbird) and we both agreed it needed to be changed. I also got to scare her daughter by showing her a Black Swallowtail caterpillar's osmeterium! We all laughed. You meet a lot of neat people at the museum and it's fun talking plants and butterflies with them. True fact - two people today asked me where I got my entomology degree from. I pointed to my University of Pennsylvania shirt and said I have an economics degree from the Wharton School. One guy asked me how I learned all this and I said books, the internet, and trial and error. And wonderful people on the forum!

The flight cage was not very diverse today. It was all Monarchs and Zebra Longwings with the exception of one Gulf Fritillary I released and one Julia (that I couldn't get a picture of). You know how I'm always saying Zebra Longwings love Jatropha - here's proof!



Here's a beat-up male Monarch.



Here's the one Gulf Fritillary I released.



I took this picture because I thought the coreopsis was really pretty but there's a Zebra Longwing on it so it counts, right?



This is a dead Polydamas. I was trying to show how when a butterfly dies of natural causes, they tend to bend their wings in just a bit and fold their legs up. Don't know why they die in this position; it just works that way.



This came out a little blurry but this is the Black Swallowtail I scared the girl with. It was actually very nice for a Black ST. They usually stinkhorn and rear back and smear it all over my finger but this one just politely stuck them out and didn't even lean back on me.



I released a ton of Zebra Longwings today and some weren't done drying so I hung them up in one of the trees. It didn't take long for the males to come swooping in and check out the females.



Back home I tried to get a picture of the tiny Pipevine ST cats.



Saw this skipper out in the butterfly garden. Skippers don't get enough love from the butterfly community, I think.



The Pipevine Swallowtail mother was out laying eggs again. I'm not sure if this is the same one. Yesterday, she was missing part of her wing but this one is missing an even bigger chunk.



I found about ten more eggs to rescue from the Dutchman's Pipevine. And I found these two Pipevine ST caterpillars! I think I got them before they ate any of the plant. So now I have six caterpillars and a bunch of eggs. Oh, and I also found a Spicebush egg that I apparently missed yesterday so now I have five of those.

Oh, a little FYI. I got really paranoid about what I was feeding the Pipevine ST cats so I took out the Trilobed Pipevine and replaced it with the Wooly Pipevine. I figured I had lost caterpillars on the Trilobed, even though we've used it successfully at MOSI so I figured why not give the Wooly Pipevine a chance. So far, so good!

I keep a glass of water on the table next to my bed and as I was drinking I noticed the Spicebush caterpillars have hatched. Well, four out of the five. The egg I found today is colored darker meaning the caterpillar should hatch soon. It makes me wonder if I really missed it yesterday or if it was laid later. I think I missed it because even if I found it yesterday they tend to take at least three days to hatch so it would still be a couple of days behind the others and it looks like it could hatch any second. Pictures when they're big enough for my camera to focus on them! For now, I'm off to bed!

Hey guys, it's Bug Week at UF and they came up with a cute quiz on what kind of butterfly are you. These may just be Florida butterflies; I haven't seen enough results to know for sure. I got Canna (or Brazilian) Skipper the first time. I took it twice because I was really split on a few answers. The second time I got Long-Tailed Skipper. Apparently, I'm a skipper at heart? And I was just saying how they get overlooked. I will pay more attention to my butterfly soul mates from now on! Take the quiz for yourself - it's only like five or six questions. http://bugs.ufl.edu/butterfly-...

And tell us what you get! Oh, and FYI, the last Spicebush cat hatched last night. I'm still at six Pipevine ST cats but I expected that since most of them just got laid two days ago. They are successfully eating the Wooly Pipevine. Fingers still crossed!

And speaking of Skipper love, here's a couple I saw while I was leaving to go to Walgreens. The first is a Long-Tailed Skipper. I get a lot of these in my yard but hadn't seen one in a while until I saw one yesterday evening. I have one of their host plants, butterfly pea, right in my front yard so I usually see a lot of them. Plus, like this one, they love to eat my porterweed.



I'm not sure what this other skipper is but I get them a lot, too. I remember them because they're a little bigger than most skippers and have no discernible markings on them. They're just plain brown. They seem to have a pretty big proboscis compared to a lot of butterflies.

I took the test and this is it. "Easygoing with a sunny disposition,(mostly true, get stressed easily) you prefer the beach to the library. (Not true, I hate the beach, don't like the crowds, don't lay in the sun, don't like to swim) Your butterfly personality is the colorful Gulf fritillary, which seeks out sunny habitats in the southern U.S. This butterfly has quick erratic flight and is drawn to flowers."

I took the test & apparently I'm not a butterfly at all but a Luna Moth.
"You light up the night like this most beautiful of moths. At home in the forests of the eastern US, the Luna caterpillar is solitary, and protected by its green coloration and "sphinx" pose when threatened. Adult luna moths are strongly attracted to the light."

Well I am a Question Mark! My wife has been telling me that for years! Geez! Took a test and proved her right. Don't tell her.

TennesseeDave said:Well I am a Question Mark! My wife has been telling me that for years! Geez! Took a test and proved her right. Don't tell her.

Well, I'm drawn to the light. That means I'm going to FRY!

My dad was a Question Mark, too! Maybe there's something about men and Question Mark butterflies? I'd take a Luna Moth, too. They're so pretty! Plus, they've gotta be raking in the bucks from all those Lunesta commercials they star in!

Then why am I poor? Show me the money!!!!!

I took it a second time, changed one thing that I wasn't sure about the first time and I am still a Gulf Fritillary.

Interesting.

I'm a Monarch.............

Polydamas Butterfly chrysalis camouflaged on Dwarf Papyrus.

I knew he was there, but even when I've shown a few people they go "Where ?" till I point right at him.

Glad to see everyone is having fun taking the quiz! Margaret I think it's trying to tell you you're a secret snowbird on the inside. The Canadians are gone for now, but come October, they'll be back!

MJ, I know chrysalises can vary in color from green to brown but of all the Polydamas I've ever seen, they've always been brown. Here at home and at the museum. I think you've got a weird one! Definitely the right shape, though. I've always heard that butterflies make a green chrysalis on smoother surfaces because they assume they're near new growth and better to blend in by being green. But if they're on a rougher surface they assume it's an older part of the plant and go brown to blend in with the older leaves and bark. Of course, I raise mine in plastic containers and the museum uses glass aquariums so who knows what they're thinking?

Speaking of, my Cloudless Sulphur made his chrysalis this morning. So did my Red Admiral while I was out in the kitchen drinking tea. I knew he was going to make it soon because he stopped eating (and he was eating like a monster)! But he had been hanging out in one of his little nests and I thought there wouldn't be enough room to make a chrysalis. Well, he found room but I'm going to tape him up to the side of the cage once the chrysalis hardens up. Otherwise, he'll have no room to expand his wings when he emerges. Also, more Pipevine ST cats are starting to hatch!

Outside my door yesterday ...

Excellent photos MJ & Tee & super news Melanie.

I keep watching the butterflies flit about all over the place here but they all seem in so much of a hurry! I wonder why? There are plenty of flowers for them to nectar on but they all seem to be more interested in flitting about. Maybe looking for mates????? They are going so fast, I haven't even attempted to get a photo. I know I could never keep up with them.