Our Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars are growing like weeds. Of the 10 or so that we currently have, 8 are now in the Chrysalis stage. This photo was taken yesterday (May 23) before they turned into Chrysalis
Butterfly And Wildlife Gardening And Photography
Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
Category Archives: ButterfliesOr maybe Alvin is wondering if a mad scientist is going to dissect him. Never! I just thought the responsible thing to do after any of Timothia’s offspring hatch would be to test them for the OE parasite. Here’s what I did. Obviously I put on some gloves in case he was infected. I took…  This might be one of the most beautiful Monarch butterflies I have seen, but I am also kind of biased. This is the first offspring from none other than Timothia! You can tell by the two black spots on the lower part of his wings that he is a male. He hatched some time today… Back in February I was trying to attract some Butterflies that I haven’t had visit before. I read about some Butterflies being attracted to rotten fruit and at the same time our Lemon tree was just starting to bloom some flowers and I thought I’d give the Honeybees some extra sugar. Since I had some…  This is also a picture from last year, but since we currently have 11 Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars that are just a day or so away from forming Chrysalis, I thought I would post this picture. This is a picture of an Eastern Black Swallowtail. They have only laid their eggs on our Fennel. What’s…  Look close. Is this a Monarch caterpillar? I’ll give you some clues. It’s crawling up a Milkweed stalk. The answer is at the bottom of the picture Notice the extra set of antennae? A Monarch only has two, a Queen has three. We had two of these appear last year. Never saw the Chrysalis or… I need some help. See the little guy below? We found him on the Parsley today, which is right next to our Fennel. I’m not sure if this is an Eastern Black Swallowtail or some other kind of caterpillar. I know there are a few butterflies that utilize Parsley as their host plant, but it…  One of the good things (besides the fruit) about fruit trees is that a few of them also act as the host plant for Giant Swallowtails. See that piece of bird poop? It’s actually about a week old Giant Swallowtail caterpillar. This guy also serves as a reminder of my fascination (addiction) with Butterfly gardening…. Remember that picture I posted the other day of the Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars? Now look how big they have become! We originally thought we just had 3, but we seem to find another 1 or 2 every day. Now we have a total of 9. These guys really like the Fennel. If I had… I mentioned before that we have about 50 Monarch caterpillars. Well, now we only have around 5 caterpillars. The remaining have all turned into seemingly healthy Chrysalis. Besides their birth, Monarchs have significant developmental challenges at their other stages of development. Going from an egg to a caterpillar, then caterpillar to Chrysalis, then Chrysalis to… Octomom would have nothing on Timothia. Right now we have about 20 Monarch chrysalis, with several more chomping away at the milkweed. Fortunately, we have enough milkweed (I hope) so that all of our current caterpillars have a chance to become full-fledged Monarch butterflies.  Okay, so perhaps by now you’re getting sick of reading and seeing pictures of Monarchs. Well, good news! I not only have Monarchs, I also have Eastern Black Swallowtails. These are really beautiful Butterflies. The biggest problem I have with these Butterflies is that they are fairly difficult to distinguish from Pipevine Swallowtails. Below is… Custom Built Butterfly Enclosure So it was a beautiful day outside watching the different Butterflies fly around. Suddenly we saw this rather large garter snake moving around by the waterfall on the pool. I said “Criquey” he’s a beaut, and went off after him to take a closer look. By the time I got him out of the pool,… The monarch caterpillars destroyed my current crop of milkweed. Fortunately Joshua’s had 18 one gallon milkweed plants in stock. We cleaned him out. Hopefully this will last until at least the weekend. The image below is just one plant, and just at the top of the plant. We’ve been able to count over 50 caterpillars… |
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