Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
Category Archives: Gulf Fritillary It’s been raining here since yesterday afternoon. Finally at about 3 the sun came out and the rain disappeared. That also brought out lots of Butterflies. They’ve probably been sheltering under leaves for quite a while. Just in five minutes I was able to count 5 Gulf Fritillary, 4 Monarchs, 1 Pipevine, 1 Polydamas, and…  I’m going to attempt to present these pictures as I saw them so you can get a feel for how I went on this little field trip today. I’m walking down the trail to the Wildflower field and noticed this large, green Spider. On closer inspection I could see this Spider was eating some type…  Since Leecy went to the Susan G. Komen walk this morning, I decided I would take a field trip back to the Houston Arboretum. As I mentioned before, I really like that place. Lots of Fritillaries were flying around, a few Monarchs, and several Skippers. There was also a beautiful Hawk hunting mice, a family… Here’s something unusual, at least to me. I knew the Hummingbirds enjoyed their feeders, but I had no idea that Butterflies might enjoy it as well. Here’s a Gulf Fritillary, using its veeerrry long tongue, to sip at the sugar water. Lots of Polydamas were flying around today but I didn’t manage to get any pictures of them. I did get a picture of a Fritillary on a red Penta. I saw something I’ve never seen today. It was two Fritillary’s mating. At least I think that’s what they were doing. The male (I’m assuming the flying Fritillary) kept fanning his wings over the female. In turn, she would just keep flying to different places on the ground. Clearly she was playing hard to get:-) To review, today, Friday July 31 2009, we had a total of 10 butterflies hatch today. Two Queens, 7 Polydamas, and 1 Gulf Fritillary. Since all the other hatchlings got their picture posted, it’s only fair that I post a picture of the Gulf Fritillary that hatched today as well. In addition to the 10 Polydamas Butterflies hatching today, we also had 1 Gulf Fritillary hatch as well. In this picture you can see its sibling who has not yet hatched. Perhaps tomorrow. Our Passionvine is growing all over the place, like up the Queen Palm, on the Bamboo, across the Milkweed, etc. However, that doesn’t mean that a Gulf Fritillary really cares all that much where the plant is growing, or even if it is growing. Here’s the story. I was cutting some Passionvine to bring inside… We had a birth today. A Gulf Fritillary. Actually we had one yesterday as well but I had forgotten about that one. There are about another 4 more Chrysalises that still need to hatch. Once this one hatched, we placed him outside on the Butterfly Bush. I figured out, quite by accident, that the Butterflies like the early morning (and occasional late afternoon when it’s cool) temperatures. The backyard was really full of life this morning, especially the Butterflies. There were at least 4 Gulf Fritillaries flying around, a few Monarchs, and even the Polydamas Swallowtail (the rare one I photographed… Nope, it’s a Gulf Fritillary Chrysalis. It’s no wonder we rarely could find the Chrysalis when they were forming outside. We have several Gulf Fritillary caterpillars munching away on the Passionvine inside, and safe from predators. This weekend I tried to do something a little different with my camera. I pulled out my Canon Macro Lens (EF 100mm f/2.8). I haven’t used this lens in quite a while so I had forgotten that it definitely takes a tripod to be able to get clear photographs with this lens. I spent alot… |
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