FYI, National Moth Week approaches! Check out the website here: http://nationalmothweek.org/

If you're a member of BAMONA, you can submit your moth photos through there and select "National Moth Week" in the project box near the bottom of the form. Since I'll be in West Virginia, Dad and I made a list of supplies to take. Moths prefer mercury vapor lights so we're going to shine one off a painter's drop cloth on the shed out back. I'm going to make some baiting brew because Grandma also gets butterfly species that will come to it so I can bait butterflies and moths. I never have any luck with it down here in Florida. Grandma's pretty anti-alcohol so I'm going to have to explain that we won't be drinking the beer that goes into the brew. And we'll have to keep the mixture outside the house so the smell doesn't kill us all.

Saw my first Monarch flitting around my Tropical MW. It came-and it went...
Then it came ans it went.....
I have plenty of it growing--but not too much.

This hot weather has causes many plants to sprout more quickly.
I think I may, actually, have a Butterfly Weed that has survived the winter in a pot.

Not really keeping track. Just letting you all know....FYI.
G.

this is last year's picture but it has survived two winters in this pot now , I planted some seeds in a slightly smaller pot at the same time , that did not survived a single winter
I definitely recommend 3 gallon or larger containers

Kurt

Why not grow in the ground?

My wife was out shopping and when she got back she saw one Monarch in my front garden where I have 26 MW. Then she looked to the South and saw 2 more cavorting. She was tickled pink. I went out and saw one on my neighbors Butterfly bush. This is the most active so far!

Most likely , I will only see the southern Migration this season , stands at 3 sightings here , the Monarch , They will stop at my Tithonia and Zinnia on their way back south , (usually)
Seeing the pearl crescent , the late red admirals , saw what I believe was a spotted Hairstreak Smaller Butterflies is all I seem to see ,

I put a few in the ground too. I germinated a whole seed pack 3 years ago and put them where ever I had room at the time.
Also I pretty sure the thinking was I could move the pot around if I wanted to.
I hope to plant more eventually , but just didn't get to it this year so far and gave half of my 2 pods worth of seeds away to my cousin.
I have 7 or 8 pods out there now on this year's plants.

I'm not wise to the different species as of yet and I just recently started snapping photos of them,but I love to watch as the bounce around.

Common names - Gulf Fritillary (3), Skipper (1), Swallowtail (2), and Zebra Longwing (1)

That's a Giant Swallowtail. Cool to see the Zebra Longwing. They don't go too far north of Florida. But the last couple of years have been good for them so they may be spreading further.

where were you before I looked up the giant swallowtail Melanie ?

just got done googling georgia swallowtails and ID'ing it

I'm here to serve. And educate! And encourage. And enable.

If they are all viable, I should have about 28 more Monarchs to release next week. Im hoping to collect alot of eggs from these, because the next batch should be the ones that migrate. Well, I think Ive got that right

Beautiful, Crawgarden! So is your avatar!!

RJ, that's a nice dark form female Tiger Swallowtail you got there! For those who wonder how I can tell, here's a few hints. First, the tails on the Tiger are much longer than those on the Spicebush. Also, the blue scaling goes up much higher than the Spicebush. You can see how high it goes up on the lower wings and is also present even on the upper wings. They're also shaped a little differently, but that isn't always obvious. And sometimes you can see the stripes on the Tiger - even the dark form - but it's hard to see when you look at them from the topside. It's hard to tell from a picture because you don't always get a sense of scale, but the Tiger is also much larger!

Like anything else, you tend to learn just be seeing them enough. Eventually, you can tell the difference. Sometimes, even I have to look pretty close to tell the difference. In fact, I think learning the difference between the dark form female Tiger and the female Spicebush was the hardest identification I had to learn. Except for the Skippers. I will never be an expert on Skippers.

Speaking of skippers ~ I think this might be a skipper caterpillar, maybe. I didn't get the lighting right on the camera but maybe you can see...

b
I'm starting to see a lot more butterfly action flying about. Hoping some will stop

Ooh, Christine that's beautiful! Look at the striping on the head capsule! Can I submit it to BAMONA or do you have an account? I looked through my book and it looks like several of the skippers, but I can't find an exact match.

Okay, now that I'm awake, let's look at some pictures.

Two days ago, I released a male Black Swallowtail and a Giant Swallowtail.



As soon as the Black ST hit the edge, it realized it could fly. The Giant stuck around for a minute. It's a little rough looking because it spent the whole night in the bathroom. I hate leaving a butterfly that large in a critter keeper, but I figure releasing it in the dark would be worse.



Zebra Longwings are a constant presence.



Long-Tailed Skipper. I like to believe they named this one after me.



So the newspaper has this thing where readers can submit a photo that they run on the top of the classified and comics section. I submitted that Tussock Moth caterpillar photo you guys liked so much back in April. They just got around to running it. Mom had to point it out to me. Maybe it will educate some people as to what they are seeing in their yards. In the spring. Not now.



I had a sense of deja vu (it's French, spellcheck!) today because once again, I released a male Black ST and a Giant ST. Here's the Black ST.



The Giant's wings weren't dry so that's why they look floppy. I set it to dry on the Jatropha. If you look close, you can see I have the beginnings of Spanish Moss growing on the Jatropha. So cute! And here I thought it only liked the oak trees.

Oh, please do submit, Melanie. I don't have an account. I'm in Hopkins County, Texas. I took the picture the evening of the 15th of July.