I had to go out and pick breakfast for the cats so I took the camera. Not too much flying this morning except the usual suspects. It's actually kind of windy outside. I know I mentioned yesterday that we had many parasatized Monarch chrysalises at the museum. It's a kind of fly that parasatizes them (although I've had the wasps, too). I get the flies more than the wasps and the flies only seem to get the Monarchs for some reason. Wasps tend to get the Swallowtails. Hmm...gonna have to look that up. Anyway, when I was throwing away the chrysalises, I gathered all the fly larvae on a paper towel. Some were already in their pupa while some were still crawling (they kind of look like little grubs). Either way - gross! You'll be happy to know when I was done I balled the paper towel up and squished the ever-loving you-know-what out of it! No one parasatizes my caterpillars and gets to live!
Here's a pretty Gulf Fritillary that was posing for me.
Mom moved a couple of Monarch cats to the Giant milkweed. You can see the big one, of course, but there's a blurry little one on the right bottom side of the leaf.
Proof that a caterpillar can beat you at yoga any day of the week. I guess it helps not to have bones. Oh, and in an update on my Corky-Stem Passion Vine, it no longer has that new growth I took a picture of a few days ago. Or the Zebra Longwing eggs that were laid on it for that matter. I found two Gulf Frit cats that I am holding responsible and have relocated them to the P. "Lavender Lady" which is what the cat in this picture is on.
This Zebra Longwing was in a weird position relative to me but when I moved he flew away which is why the second picture is so much further away.
My Spicebush cats don't seem to be growing very fast so I'm trying a new tactic and feeding them Sassafras. As we all know, fruits and vegetables (and plants) lose their nutrition as soon as they're picked. I have this theory that maybe Spicebush loses it's nutrition faster than other plants; it certainly dries out pretty fast. And picking a leaf every day that was barely getting eaten was going to make me run out of the stuff pretty fast anyhow. So we're trying Sassafras and seeing how that goes. Dad wants me to run out of both so I have to go get Red Bay (from either MOSI or one of the county preserves). Dad's a woodturner and likes to be able to identify trees and he doesn't know Red Bay or Swamp Bay so he's just looking for a reason to make me go teach him.
Since I've been typing the Pipevine Swallowtails have attacked the new leaf and are currently crowded around the stem and are gnawing it down. Which is such a Polydamas thing to do! Seriously, once they get to a certain size, Polydamas love stem. They will eat the stems on your plant and all the leaves will be laying on the ground. It's incredibly wasteful, which is one reason I bring them inside to raise. I feel like I'm talking to little kids, "You have to eat your leaf before you get any more stem!"
