Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
Category Archives: Host Plants I know I haven’t posted in a while, I’m just taking it easy. It’s also been a little more challenging to take photos since it gets dark so early. So on to this post. I’m guessing that most folks don’t think about Butterflies two days before Christmas, but I wanted to share our Monarch Butterfly…  I’ve mentioned previously that we really haven’t seen many Gulf Fritillary Butterflies this year. I still think the drought has something to do with that. However, while I was out photographing the Monarch Butterflies, I noticed a smaller Butterfly chasing the Monarchs. It turns out it was a Gulf Fritillary. I’m assuming this one is…  We still have lots of Monarch Butterflies flying around the yard and even more Monarch Caterpillars. Most of the Butterflies look very clean, not like they have been migrating for several hundred miles so I’m assuming these are new releases. What I’ve also noticed is that these Butterflies are mating, and in the case of…  Before this year and the drought we have experienced, one of the most common Butterflies we had in the backyard was the Gulf Fritillary. That has not been the case this year. We have seen very few and as a result our Passion Vine is taking over one area of the garden (from the lack…  Another great day for the Fall 2011 Migration of Monarch Butterflies through Houston. I saw a total of 7 today, and tagged 5 of them. There were roughly the same amount of males and females. I mentioned this on the Journey South site, but what I’m noticing this year compared to previous years is how…  Houston, we have a problem! I found 5 Monarch Caterpillars today. The problem with that is that I’ve been on vacation all week and I’ve never seen any Monarch Butterflies. Leecy gets home well before dark, and she hasn’t seen any Monarch Butterflies either. So where did they come from? Were they Monarchs migrating from…  I need to get a few things off my chest (actually just one thing). This drought. It’s driving me nuts. This whole weather thing is driving me nuts actually. On the East Coast they’re flooding. Down here in Texas we’re drying up. Is this the effects of global warming? What will this wacky weather mean…  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.  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…  Another great day for the Monarch Butterflies! We released a total of 9 Monarch Butterflies today. I said yesterday that I was going to try and record some video of this event, and I did, but the videos didn’t come out as good as I would have liked, so I’m just going to post some…  It was a beautiful day outside and once the weather warmed up just a bit, the Butterflies started emerging from their Chrysalises (Monarchs) or they wandered over to our Butterfly and Hummingbird garden. This is the first Pipevine Swallowtail we have seen in 2011, and it was going crazy on the red Wildflowers. It was…  Anyone know what type of eggs these are? These are on my Redbud Tree. These don’t look like any type of Butterfly eggs that I’ve seen before.  Our Sassafras tree is really putting out some nice, soft leaves. I was casually checking the leaves to see if any Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillars were feeding. I then saw this small insect, but I have no idea what it is It was definitely eating the leaf, but I don’t even know where to look to…  What a difference a day makes! Today was a beautiful day, nothing but sunshine. That, in turn, brought out the hungry Monarch Caterpillars. I was totally surprised when I went outside to check on them and found out that they were clustering on the two remaining Milkweed plants they had not already devoured. I’m going…  I had no idea we had so many Monarch Caterpillars! Because of their size, I decided it would be in the best interest of their safety if I moved them to our Butterfly Enclosure. There are six Milkweed plants in the Enclosure. With so many Monarch Caterpillars, I don’t expect these plants to have many… |
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