Well, I was cleaning the Orange-Barred Sulphur cats' container when I saw I had a hitchhiker! Another Sulphur cat is in there. But he's super tiny. I guess he listened to me when I told all the caterpillars to show themselves and I would give them safe harbor and all you can eat Senna.

Outside today, there was a White Peacock in my neighbor's yard. They like his yard because he has a lot of frogfruit - one of their host plants - in his lawn. He should give up the dream of St. Augustine grass and go with the frogfruit.



Meanwhile, my yard was visited by a Monarch interested in egg-bombing my milkweed. Good times!

Very late afternoon (6:30 pm) Monarch nectaring at the Lantana.

Yay for Monarchs, both in Dave's yard & laying eggs @ Melanie's!!!! I keep looking for them here but so far no go. I see the general color flitting & pick up the binoculars & it's always a Gulf Frit.

caught this one last week loving the Honeycomb butterfly bush.

Beautiful shot Linda.

Good to see a few BF's around. Haven't seen any for a couple of days now, being wet and rainy may have an impact but then again, they might just be gone.

Last night I was searching an older backup hard drive and came across a set of pics from The Butterfly House which is located in a western St Louis suburb and is run by MOBOT. Date there was Sept., '09. I'll post some of those pics here (and in database when appropriate.



Dark Blue Tiger


Great Mormon BF


Clipper BF


Blue Morpho BF


Orange Julia


Red Mormon(?)


Scarlet Peacock


Owl (?)


Rice Paper


Giant Swallowtail


Zebra Longwings





African Swallowtail aka Mocker Swallowtail and The Flying Hankerchief


Sara Longwing


Tiger Longwing


Variable Cracker


Beefheart (?)




Some of the unknowns may come to me, when and if so, I'll edit and include.

Amazing butterflies J!!

What a treat Jack!!!!! Thanks so much for sharing those. My goodness, so many that we don't have here & I haven't even run across in photos before. Yes, those 2 DO look like an owl.
Isn't nature astounding?

Jack, those are great!

I'm oohing and ahhing here. That Giant ST doesn't look like the ones we have here. I wonder if that's a common name that's used for more than one species? And why are the Zebra Longwings always hooking up?

I suppose they must feel like these Cabbage Whites do...
disengaging >
Not the best pics in the world but one may ascertain what's going on w/ a little imagination...


Thursday turned out to be a good BF day (1st time the sun has shined all week)...Some more pics -->

Sulphurs -




Painted Lady -


Question Mark -


Couple of moths as well -

Cabbage Loper Moth -


I call this one a 'Black Cloaked Moth'

It's finally cooled down here which means 80s for highs instead of 90s. I went out about 4pm to collect some caterpillar food and of course, look for caterpillars. I was not disappointed.

The Sennas are blooming which means you have to look at the buds and flowers to find caterpillars. Case in point.



And this guy. This is actually a different caterpillar than the first photo even though I know they look the same.



And then I found myself a big guy. Again, notice the flowers. This time of year you can pretty much skip the leaves and just look to the flowers to find your caterpillars.



Now, the flower-eating caterpillars pose one problem. Both Cloudless and Orange-Barred Sulphurs eat Senna (and Cassia). The Cloudless Sulphur is a green caterpillar and the Orange-Barred is a yellow caterpillar. So far, so good. Except, when they eat the flowers the Cloudless Sulphurs turn yellow! I also think the Orange-Barred get slightly more yellow, too. This makes it hard to identify them. But in this picture, the Cloudless Sulphur is the one in the back and you can see he has blue "rings" around him while the Orange-Barred in front maintains his normal blue pattern. Still, it gets confusing when you're used to seeing them one way but then a few months out of the year they decide to change their minds.



And for fun, here's one of my Spicebush cats. They're getting big and eating a lot of Sassafras!

Jack, the sulphurs on the Dahlias is amazing in the colors are so the same even to the spots on the sulphur matching the center of the dahlias.
Love, love, love the shadow Question Mark photo!

Thanks for showing the comparison photos of the cats there Melanie!

Thanks Ann

Jack.

Ok, these pics are repeats but I just heard back from BAMONA (finally!) and wanted to share their wisdom.

So, on Sept. 15 I took these photos of a skipper.



BAMONA has identified it as a Southern Broken-Dash.

Then, the next day, I take this photo and submit it.



I get all brave and decide I'm going to look in my book and guess what it is and see if BAMONA agrees. I check, and I think it's a Southern Broken-Dash, according to my book. So that's what I submitted. Well, BAMONA comes back and tells me it's the Northern Broken-Dash!

First off, how can they tell the difference? Secondly, isn't it weird that I had the Northern and the Southern in my yard on consecutive days? By the way, they both do occur in Central Florida, so it's not out of the realm of possibility. I'm thinking I can create some kind of hybrid and call it the "Middle of the Road Dash". They host on St. Augustine so it makes sense that I'd see them. (Guess what my lawn is made of?) I just found it really weird to have both kinds in my yard. The Northern one isn't even listed in my book so at first I was like, "No way!" But then I researched and found out they both live here so I guess BAMONA is right again. I wonder if they do ever interbreed, though. Hmm...Anyway, now we're all a little smarter, I hope!

I have St.Augustine too & could swear I've at least seen the Northern Broken Dash here. So I learned something new. I'll keep a lookout for the Southern Broken Dash.



Middle of the Road Dash...

A blurry fuzzy wuzzy. He was so high on the wall that I had to hold the camera as far as my arms would reach & hope I got the shot.




An extremely faded Gulf Frit who didn't want to have it's photo taken. He or she is still fully intact but there is little color left on this tired old soul.

Ok, I'm done banging my head against the wall for now. Facebook is making me crazy. First, I had to correct one of the local preserves about one of their caterpillar pictures. They had a picture of a "Pipevine Swallowtail" caterpillar that was actually a Polydamas. I called them on it and let them know Pipevine ST cats would die on the tropical pipevine in their picture. So far, I haven't heard back. Then, another preserve south of me (that I've never been to, but want to) posted a picture of the extremely endangered Florida panther on their trailcam. I was like, "Yay! Panthers!" And this woman starts posting about how the panthers have upset the "balance" and she doesn't see any wildlife in her yard anymore. So then, the preserve posts a picture of a hog and I post, "I hope the panther eats the hog." And she posts that it will. So I explained that hogs are not native to Florida and were brought by the Spanish. They actually do a lot of damage because they dig up many endangered plants. I used to work in the payroll department for the county and we had a contract with a hunter to go into the preserves and kill the hogs because they were such a problem. And then she comes back with how we brought in the Texas panthers and there's been an "explosion" in SW Florida. We did bring in a few dozen Texas panthers to breed with the Florida panthers because there were so few and they were terribly inbred. But the latest estimate of how many panthers there are is like 120. Dad says he thinks there are more than that because if you count how many are killed on the road each year and how many his hunting buddies have seen, he thinks there are more than they're letting on. But there's certainly no "explosion". So I tagged the preserve in the comments and asked them to clarify whether or not we're having some kind of panther explosion that's not being reported in the media. And even if we did have a normal amount of panthers (however many that is), isn't part of the "balance" that you have a predator at the top of the food chain - preferably one that isn't called "man"? I get so fed up with ignorance!

Now that you've let me rant, I do have some cool caterpillar pictures to share. My Spicebushies have gut purged and one is in its sling and they're getting ready to make their chrysalis! Let's go through the process as it has happened so far...

First, we have the normal, green caterpillar. By the way, I've often suspected that Spicebushies from the north have a darker or thicker black line on the bottom of their secondary eyespots. Don't know if that's significant, but I've noticed it. FYI, these are my Spicebushies from WV so they are different.



Now, here's the other one as he was starting to change color. I was like, "Great, I get to clean up a gut purge soon."



When I went to bed at 2:15 this morning, I did a final caterpillar check. And he was making his sling! Just watching them do that gives me neck cramps.



Then, the other one changed color and wanted to hang out with the first one.



They both seemed to have settled on the lid. Now, another difference I noticed is that these guys don't turn orange like the ones in Florida. In the books and online I've read where people describe the color as yellow or golden and I'm always like, "What are they talking about? They turn orange!" But apparently, it must vary. I still can't figure out how changing color this drastically helps them blend in at all. It's one of those questions I need to save for when I go harass the entomologists at UF.



As for butterflies, I was having a Long-Tailed Skipper party on the porterweed around noon. I counted at least four on my two plants out front.



In sad news, my big Orange-Barred Sulphur cat died. That's the thing about Sulphurs - they up and die on you at any time for no reason. It's rather frustrating. I still have one Cloudless and two suspected Orange-Barreds left so I went to pick Senna for them today. I didn't find any caterpillars, but I did find this native anole (as opposed to the Cuban variety). So that's cool, I guess. I warned him about eating my caterpillars but I'm not fluent in anole yet, so I hope he understood.