Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
Category Archives: Host Plants 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…  We have lots and lots of Monarch Caterpillars right now from the original female Monarch Butterfly we saw a couple of weeks ago. It’s rather interesting as all of these Monarch Caterpillars are roughly the same size. I even recording a brief video of just one of our Milkweed plants and all of the Caterpillars. …  Yea! Our second female Monarch Butterfly appeared today! She wasted no time in laying eggs on our Milkweed. She also made several visits to our Wildflower Garden to get some nectar. She must have hung around for at least 3 hours today. She looked pretty good, especially coming from Mexico (I’m assuming). Her wings were…  Just a brief update tonight since I am getting home late. I’ll be posting lots of pictures this weekend, especially since we now have lots of Monarch Caterpillars. I just checked some of our Milkweed plants tonight, and many of them are covered in Monarch Caterpillars. The picture below is just one plant (and not…  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…  Boy, it’s been a real challenge trying to get pictures of this female Monarch Butterfly who has been laying eggs in the newly sprouted Milkweed. Most of the Milkweed I have is very low to the ground, and many of the plants have lots of dead, distracting stems. Based on the number of eggs I…  Well I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news (actually great news as far as I’m concerned) is that our first Monarch from Mexico appeared today (March 11, 2011). She’s a female, and shows some decent signs of wear, but overall looked pretty healthy. Most of my Milkweed is just now sprouting, so…  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…  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…  We’ve had some beautiful weather here in Houston the last few days, with sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 60′s. That’s going to be changing this week, where we may have 4 days below freezing. And just think, I almost decided I could start preparing for Spring in the garden. We still have Monarch…  I released 3 Monarch Butterflies today (they eclosed three days ago). Two of the Butterflies immediately flew away as soon as they were released, but one Male Monarch decided to hang around and sun himself. Speaking of Monarch Butterflies, we currently have 8 Chrysalises, 2 Caterpillars (who are likely sick..I’ll explain shortly), and 4 adult…  We have 18 Monarch Caterpillars, 9 are Chrysalises. We even found more Caterpillars on the outdoor Milkweed which was surprising since the temperature got down to 22F last week. Since the weather is supposed to be in the 60′s until the weekend, we are leaving the ones we found outside in the outdoor Butterfly enclosure….  It’s getting cold here in Houston. According to the latest weather reports I’ve seen, the temperature might get down to 22 degrees tonight. Although we’ve been keeping a few Monarch Caterpillars indoors, we’ve kept several outside, we just covered them up to provide some insulation. As we were covering our plants and pipes tonight, Leecy… |
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