North Carolina: Bugs

So the chrysalis I posted a few days ago came from a caterpillar like this one:

Pipevine Swallowtail

Spot the yellow spider on these yellow flowers!

Spotted on a trail - this is a Question Mark Butterfly:

We were driving (very slowly) on a dirt road and I spotted this caterpillar, I had Rob stop so I could get its picture:

Yellow Woolly Bear Caterpillar - Tiger Moth

Natalie spotted this one on the trail.

Yellow Sulfur, Red Hibiscus

Caterpillars

I planted a passion vine in the back corner of the backyard.  It is a hearty plant that grows very quickly, but the caterpillars keep it in check! 

Gulf Fritilary  See those yellow dots on the leaves - I think they must be nectaries on the underside of the leaf because there will be ants lined up at each one.  The flower is only open during the shadier times of the day and wilts in open sun.  There are several different passion vines, this one has a medium sized white flower.

Crummy focus - these are zebra longwing.

The passion vine is also a host plant for Julia butterflies, but they are the least common of these three.

I'm not sure how it got there, but a milkweed grew up at the base of the passion vine.  It got very tall before it flowered and was the largest one I've grown.  (Although, I can't take much credit!)  We got a big generation of monarchs and that was the end of that!

It's been a very interesting corner of the yard, and I often found a kid with their nose in it just watching the caterpillars. 

More Butterflies

Munching On!

We brought home the wild Julia Caterpillar we found and stuck it on our plant.  I've found that this plant grows very well from cuttings (even cuttings that have had every single leave nibbled away) and I'm attempting to start a few new vines of it. 

This is a zebra longwing (L) and the Julia (R)  The Julia Chrysalis looks a lot like a Gulf Fritillary.

They eclosed the same day:

The Julia is shaped similarly to a Zebra longwing but is orange all over.  It also has pale eyes.

Fuzzy picture to show wing shape:

We are kind of known around our neighborhood for coddling these insects, and even out new neighbors have to admit that they are pretty amazing!

More Bugs

We've been finding all sorts of interesting creatures lately, I'll credit spring.

First - creepy ones - these are brown widow spiders:

Supposedly they are not as poisonous as black widow spiders.  We found their interestingly spiky egg sacs on a fence one day and brought one home - only for it to fill a jar with tiny spiders.  We quickly made an id and disposed of our brood after watching them make cute little webs.  Now that we know what they are...we find them all over the place.  Yay.

This is a kind of tussock moth.  I'm not sure what kind, but we found them on a live oak tree. 

A few days later we found several in the pupa stage - the empty caterpillar is still on the outside - they do have a chrysalis, but they also have a cocoon around the chrysalis.  It looks like the empty body falls off in bits.  The female is not able to fly, but sits on the cocoon and lays her eggs there, then she dies.

We located more passion vine and found this wild Zebra Longwing chrysalis (and took it home of course!)

It eclosed the next day:

And finally, today we found this Julia butterfly caterpillar.  They also eat passion vine.  They have slender orange wings.

A Week of Butterflies

After a quiet week of metamorphosing, our butterfly cage was very active this week!

Monarch Monday!

On Tuesday the first Gulf Fritillary eclosed.

The top of their wings are very different from the bottom, I think they are very pretty.  This one lost no time flying away!  There was no butterfly photo shoot with the kids!

On Wednesday, this gal was stretching her wings when we got up.  Amazing!

On Thursday the remaining 3 chrysalises opened.  First - Gulf Fritillary.  (I also misplaced my camera Thursday so these are all cell phone pics. )  (Sorry for the gross stain in the picture, that is just a normal part of the process!)

2nd Zebra Longwing - I was uncertain if this one would make it.  It did not eat as much as it wanted because the plant it was on was out of leaves.  It seemed to be be searching for leaves for a while.  It looked pretty good when it first emerged, but one wing was deformed and it could not fly properly.

Waiting on #3!  We were there when it opened and did see it come out, but no pics.

Stopped for just a second!

This one hung around for pictures.

You can see the bad wing in this picture.  We decided the best thing to do was put it near flowers and let it go.  It did eventually disappear.

In the backyard, there are teeny tiny caterpillars on our passion vine.  I think they are zebra longwings, but I do not see how there can possibly be enough leaves for them all.  They are all at the same stage, so I am doubtful that any of them will make it.  They say that in the wild only 10% of butterfly eggs make it to the butterfly stage.

The interesting thing about the eggs on the passion vine is that none of them are on mature leaves.  They are all on the newest parts of the vines.  I guess those butterfly moms know what they are looking for!

Wordless Wednesday

Back to Butterflies

We replanted milkweed in our front yard and are getting some visitors. Even Irene is enjoying the little caterpillars :) One plant is growing a seed pod, I'm not sure it will mature successfully - I'm going to try covering it with tulle to try to keep the caterpillars off of it.

Also - we were out for a walk and found a corky stemmed passion vine growing in a landscaped common area of our association.  I think it is our native passion vine, but not sure, and wonder how it got there.  It seems to be growing very haphazardly in this particular area.  We found lots and lots and lots of zebra longwing caterpillars and gulf fritallary caterpillars at many different instars.  We've collected a few already.  I've been looking for zebra longwing caterpillars for a long time.

This is our yard - Natalie is examining the milkweed.

Monarch - I think this is the one we put in the cage a day or so later.  That one is "making a J" tonight.

C & A and the vine we found.  We would not have found it except there is a piece sticking up - not sure how our indiscriminate landscapers missed it, but glad they did!

Gulf Fritillary - We have 3 in the cage - one is already a chrysalis.

Zebra Longwing!!!  We have one in the cage, they are supposed to be about 4 cm to be 5th instar, they seem to be a little behind the Gulf Fritillaries.

Buncha babies!

We wore out our first butterfly cage and found this extra large one at a garage sale.

Despite the threatening looking spikes, neither of these caterpillars sting.

Gulf Fritillary

Gulf Fritillary and Zebra Longwing destined for our cage!

Gulf Fritillary

After watching our chrysalis for about 2 weeks, we noticed today that two white dots had appeared on it.

Knowing that meant something, I took pictures of both sides.

Not long later, the kids found a butterfly!  They also found a lizard attacking the butterfly and they chased it away!

After examining it (a little too) carefully, we decided it is probably ok.

Gulf Fritillary

Butterfly Joy!

So pretty!

They named it Cloud Jumper.