Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
Category Archives: Eastern Black Swallowtail It must be getting close to Spring as I’m starting to see some Butterflies. For the first time this year, I saw an Eastern Black Swallowtail and she was laying eggs on the Fennel. We never cook with Fennel, we just let it grow however it wants in our garden. The result is that we…  We’re not seeing a whole lot of Butterflies at the moment, but we do have a few. The last couple of days we have had a female Eastern Black Swallowtail hanging around the Fennel and laying eggs.  If you don’t have a Butterfly Bush, I highly recommend getting one if you want to attract Butterflies. These plants are wonderful nectar plants for Butterflies and Hummingbirds really like them as well. Today there was a large male Eastern Black Swallowtail that just couldn’t get away from this plant. In this particular photo the…  I wanted to share an interesting phenomenon that occurs among Eastern Black Swallowtail Butterflies, specifically the Chrysalises. Eastern Black Swallowtails can create two types of Chrysalises. They can be either green or brown. If I remember correctly, the green Chrysalises tend to emerge in the Spring and Summer, whereas the brown Chrysalises tend to emerge…  I have some pictures of Eastern Black Swallowtails that I wanted to share. Before I get to that, I wanted to share some information and see if others might have noticed the same thing. We’ve had quite a few eggs and Caterpillars from the Eastern Black Swallowtail, but just as the Caterpillars get to be…  I got home while there was still a little bit of daylight left, so I grabbed my camera to take some pictures of the Butterfly Caterpillars we have. First are the Eastern Black Swallowtail Caterpillars. We have quite a few of these now, we’ve counted around 20, but our Fennel is so thick, I’m sure… I know I’ve been posting lots of bird pictures, but the Butterfly pictures are coming as well. We have lots of little Monarch Caterpillars right now from the single female that we saw a couple of weeks ago. We also have lots of little Caterpillars from the Eastern Black Swallowtail. I simply ran out of…  In between digging up some Bamboo, photographing Wildflowers, and trimming some Milkweed, we had another Eastern Black Swallowtail visit the garden. This particular Butterfly was laying eggs on both the Fennel and Dill. In the past, the Eastern Black Swallowtail would only lay eggs on our Fennel, not the Dill, although that is one of…  I’m still waiting for the Monarch Butterflies to arrive, but I do have some visiting Eastern Black Swallowtail Butterflies. I wrote the other day about the Eastern Black Swallowtail I saw flying around the Fennel (I checked really close, and I have not seen one egg), and today I saw another (or perhaps it was…  Our first Eastern Black Swallowtail of 2011 appeared today. It was flying around one section of our garden where the Fennel is in full bloom. I’d like to assume this was a female getting ready to lay some eggs, but honestly, I never noticed this Butterfly laying any eggs in the short time that it…  Holy Cow! Today there were Butterflies everywhere in the backyard. We had a Monarch, Question Mark, Variegated Fritillary, Giant Swallowtail, Gray Hairstreak, Eastern Black Swallowtail, some type of Crescent Butterfly, and a Pipevine Swallowtail. I got a few pictures, but I missed several and several others weren’t that good as I got over-excited. The plants…  I guess this Milkweed must really have a lot of nectar in the flowers. This is an Eastern Black Swallowtail sipping nectar on the Milkweed. For the past 3 years, the Eastern Black Swallowtail’s have always laid their eggs on our Fennel. So far this year, we’ve seen a few of the Black Swallowtail, but…  In addition to the female Monarch who was getting nectar from the Milkweed, an Eastern Black Swallowtail also stopped by to grab some nectar.  I can’t believe these Eastern Black Swallowtail Chrysalises are still alive. It’s been nearly 7 months, but we had another Eastern Black Swallowtail hatch today. We took the Butterfly outside to warm up in the sun, but the sun never appeared. Once it became clear it was going to rain, we brought the Butterfly back…  I thought I’d provide a little backyard Butterfly update. We haven’t seen any Monarch Butterflies, but we do have 9 Caterpillars from the one Monarch from Mexico. To give the Caterpillars the best chance of success, I have quarantined them in our Butterfly Enclosure. I did this to protect the Caterpillars from predatory wasps and… |
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