Okay, I went to MOSI today and got to hang out with my bosses. Hadn't actually seen them in person since last year so it was good to catch up and talk butterflies with them. We took a field trip out to Plant City to a butterfly farm they like to trade with. The lady there gives us her "seconds" - chrysalises that aren't perfect enough for her to send to customers. And we give her stuff in return like some Malachite eggs today.
Here's a picture of her setup. There were more of these boxes on the other side and another wall of them behind this one. So many caterpillars!
Here's a close up of one of the tanks where she was raising Giant Swallowtails.
Back at the museum, the Hickory Horned Devils (Regal Moth cats) are getting big and changing color! We did a census and we have 36 of them left. We lost quite a few last week, unfortunately. Some drowned themselves in the water we put the food in and some died when we switched from Hickory to Sweet Gum. They started out on Sweet Gum so I don't know what the problem was. We're not even sure if it was the food change, for sure. But they're doing better now.
My bosses left at noon but I stayed until 2:30 because they asked me to do a couple of easy tasks and then I ended up chatting with all the guests in the flight cage. We had a pretty diverse group of butterflies. Starting with this Julia. The wings are a little messed up but she was getting by all right.
We have tons of Black Swallowtails. Found some more eggs and cats in the parsley today, too.
This Monarch and Julia were hanging out and eating together.
We have quite a few Giant Swallowtails and from the eggs I collected last week, we should have even more in a few weeks!
One of the things my boss asked me to do was put new fruit in the flight cage for the Malachites. We have over-ripe bananas and mango for them.
Orange-Barred Sulphurs are having a good year.
Doesn't this Great Southern White look like he's staring at the camera?
We were talking about how we haven't seen as many Buckeyes this year but they're still around.
And my bosses are going to love me because I found so many Atala caterpillars and eggs! You can see the caterpillars just molted. And they really are reddish-orange with yellow dots. How cool is that?
I'm pretty sure this is what hatched Atala eggs look like but I brought them in anyway.
The Malachite caterpillars are tiny but I'll keep you updated as they grow.
Cloudless Sulphur
Cloudless Sulphur on top, Orange-Barred Sulphur on bottom. Right before I took this there was also a Zebra Longwing on the same flower cluster but he heard I was taking a picture and flew off.
While walking to my car I passed through the gardens and the Swallowtails were hitting the pentas hard! Here's a Spicebush Swallowtail.
And there was also a Pipevine Swallowtail!
And then there was a photo I was trying to take of the Pipevine ST when I got photobombed by the Spicebush ST.
That's it for me. I need a nap.
