Note to self:
Remember to my update last will and testament to include a bequest for @flaflwrgrl for her kind words.

Sweet capture of the two long tailed skippers - greene!

Ann, I have your salvia and goldenrod pictured in my mind and they should look beautiful together.

And, Jim, that is an awesomet cloudy sky photo!

I had about as good a day trying to photograph this large sulphur butterfly that was bouncing around the salvia! It wasn't in the mood to pose!

Still, great pics...

Found a BF hiding in the grass, Pearl Crescent -

I'm pretty doped on allergy meds so I'm just going to leave these photos here.

This is my porterweed drying rack. Two female Black Swallowtails.



Tropical Checkered Skipper



Phaon Crescent. I've released so many of these and I still have so many caterpillars. Luckily, I found some more Frogfruit growing back on the neighbor's property which is where this picture was taken. This one's not on Frogfruit, but they usually fly close to it so I just follow the butterflies.



I found this Looper caterpillar in the grass on my neighbor's property. Going to have to send it to BAMONA. And look, there's an ant on him in some of the pictures. Now wonder he acted mad.



Another Tropical Checkered Skipper



Tiny orange skippers, some more orange than others.



More female Black Swallowtails.



Gulf Fritillary laying eggs on Passiflora 'Lavender Lady'.



Long-Tailed Skipper on Salvia 'Mystic Spires'



Saw a female Orange-Barred Sulphur flying around my Senna, but she never stopped. Maybe because it's already been egged? Eggs are the football-shaped things on the buds. When Senna flowers, they lay eggs mostly on the buds.



Gulf Frit was still hanging out near the Passion Vine. Here it's on a weed I need to pull. The blue in the background is Pumbago which is covered in the Passion Vine.



Picking Desmodium for the Long-Tailed Skippers and still finding eggs. Sometimes they lay them singly, sometimes in groups, and sometimes they stack them. Never have figured out why they vary so much.



Long-Tailed Skippers have slowed down enough even they have to stop and bask once in a while. Hooray for cooler temperatures! Love that turquoise coloring on their backs.

Always wonderful, mellie!

I keep forgetting to mention this, but I was on BAMONA submitting that caterpillar and it reminded me. I saw a skipper a couple of weeks ago that I submitted as a Eufala Skipper even though I thought the color was a bit off. Well, it turns out I had seen something new to me as BAMONA said it was actually a Three-Spotted Skipper (Cymaenes tripunctus). That one isn't even listed in my book, probably because it's supposed to be a South Florida butterfly that also extends down into Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. I did some research on it and apparently it does look a lot like the Eufala Skipper. There are some differences to their coloring, but I guess the big difference is that the Three-Spotted Skipper has much longer antenna relative to its body length. So I felt good that even though I guessed wrong, I guessed close. Maybe the guys at BAMONA think I'm getting better! Plus, I don't think this species is supposed to be this far north. There's another report over by Kissimmee (near Orlando and one of those cities only Floridians can pronounce). I read a scientific paper where UF had spotted some near Gainesville years ago but some people think they may have actually been Eufala Skippers that were wrongly identified. Anyway, I thought it was cool to see a new butterfly. This has been a really good year for that. Here are the pictures and BAMONA links if you want to check it out.



Record of my sighting: http://www.butterfliesandmoths...

General species info page: http://www.butterfliesandmoths...

BAMONA did list it as "Resident" status so I guess they do belong here, but you can see there aren't a lot of reports in my area.

Hurray for mellie.

Love the shots of the sulphur, Christine!
Pretty crescent, J!
Nice assortment as always, Melanie. Your BSTs sure pose nicely for you!

Melanie,

I just saw this post on another website and thought you might know the answer to his question:

http://www.network54.com/Forum...

Thanks!

Great pics everyone!!!!

Melanie, that's very interesting how the Long Tailed Skippers are so willy nilly with the way they lay eggs. Crazy.
Neat about the Three Spotted skipper. And about the allergies.

Very interesting link Danita.

Robin, the trick is to take the pictures before they learn to fly. See how swollen the abdomen of the one is? They were still drying their wings and full of meconium. One helpfully shot its fluid out as I walked past. Luckily, it missed me. I always try to take pics before they can fly. That's why you see me with butterflies in my bathroom if they come out at night.

Danita, I replied but I think it has to go through a moderator first. But no, that Monarch looks perfectly fine to me. The pattern on Monarchs, and many caterpillars, will vary quite a bit. I've had many that look darker or have more black bands than usual. That is not a sign of disease. OE is very hard to detect at the caterpillar stage. I told him to let it become a chrysalis because it's much easier to tell if a chrysalis is diseased (discoloration is very prominent) so he could always euthanize it then. If he's that concerned, he should get a microscope and look for the spores that way. At least give the Monarch a chance. Just because one looks a little different is no call for killing it. I didn't understand what he was saying about the tubercles, either. They look perfectly normal to me.

Melanie, I always try to take pics of my butterflies before their wings are fully dried, too. It's when they're fully mobile that they just won't post for me.

Thanks so much, Melanie!
They approved your post.
I was hoping that you could tell him not to kill the caterpillar. I hated the thought of the little guy being euthanized for no reason.

Glad to hear that, Danita. I was telling Dad the other day how a lot of the Great Southern Whites we get as chrysalises at MOSI are from a butterfly farm we trade with. They are considered "seconds" so they're not good enough quality for her to ship to paying customers. Some of them do look odd and some don't come out right, but you would be amazed at the number that come out just fine.

I was really surprised that he had never seen a Monarch caterpillar that was blacker than usual (Black Swallowtail cats do the same thing) and that he thought it was connected to the OE spore. If he had an OE outbreak and was really worried, I would say just clean everything you have but it looked like the Monarch he has was outside anyway.

flaflwrgrl said:OOPS! Forgot to say that yesterday my 3 Asclepias tuberosa (milkweed) plants arrived. Meanwhile I will be germinating the seeds of various milkweeds I got that are native to FL. I'll hope to get seed pods off these 3 plants so I can wild sow them all over the property.

I got 2 agastache plants also -- black adder - & a nice goldenrod that only gets about 18" tall.

Nice choices @flaflwrgrl. All of those will be humming with butterflys.

Hi all,
I have hundreds of extra Gomphocarpus fruticosus (Swan Plant) seeds. These are great milkweed bushes for Monarch butterflies. They are large enough to provide lots of leaves (4' x 4') and are herbaceous here in zone 9. Anyone interested in a trade or a package for postage let me know. When my tropical milkweeds are all eaten up it's nice to have somewhere to put the late season catapillers!

ooo - I have some asclepias tuberosa seeds I could trade for that one I've never seen.
It would be an annual here.