They are here!!
Butterfly Beauties 2008
Enjoy these and bring your own photos. They are welcome. We are also going to be posting links where you can have your wondeful photo shots submitted.
The season started with finding these caterpillars busy making nests in the Silver Mound. It looked very unattractive so I removed them to their new home. We hatched 9 butterflies!!
Not much happened after that until I returned from vacation. That afternoon I spotted a giant fluttering around our plants.
With help from our State Lepidopterist, it was identified as a Black Tiger Swallowtail (female). It looked so much like a Spicebush Swallowtail, I had to look it up myself and was convinced he was correct.
By now, I was really getting excited and kept my camera ever on ready!! I got lucky again.
Needed help with this one for sure. I was saying Variegated Fritillary. Wrong again, he found the correct one for me.
Tawny Emporer
Now I am really excited!
While looking for black swallowtail catepillars on the dill, fennel, and parsley - there it was on a plaintain seed pod, a cocoon!! Oh wow, that was better, I did not have to feed it!!
Here it is after about a week and half.
No, it does not stop here!
As I was pulling bagworms off the willow trees, I saw a monster. A caterpillar I had only seen in the books. Of course, he went, limb & all to the aquarium. Oh, I got pictures of his regal "beauty". He has now made the cocoon and I am awaiting the coming out. Remember my picture of the Red Spotted Purple!! That is the caterpillar, later for the butterfly.
Picture from 2007
The excitement continues and I really hope you will get excited with us and bring your own 'catches'. Just remember to resize and put your copyright protection. You might need it for later.
Here is one link that poses a possibility for entering your photos into their database, check for your own State information.
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/
If anyone has other links that you would like to post here, please do. There are also photo contests to enter for prizes and MONEY!!
Happy Picture Taking!
Sara