Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: My new Adopted Gulf Fritillary Cats, 0 by UniQueTreasures

UniQueTreasures wrote:
Hi Greenie, I'm a newbie at this myself, so don't know if I'll be of much help to you or not. It's fascinating watching them in the caterpillar house.

Coming to this very forum was the first RIGHT thing you have done. There is a wealth of information within the Butterfly and Hummer Forum.

I think one of the first things to do it to learn to identify what you have. Second, you need to see what is native to your specific area. Certain butterflies seem to migrate, while others don't. Even if they migrate, they make every effort to return to their "home" plants.

There are specific host plants for the caterpillars. The Gulf Fritillary caterpillars are deep pumpkin orange with black spikes on them. The orange is harder to see when they are smaller, but it's there. The GF use the Passion Vine as their host plants.

Both my sister and I have passion vines. We've never held the blooms side by side to see if they are the same variety. My passion vines have remained empty of caterpillars. I've never seen a single GF cat on my vines and I do look, several times a day. Oh the other hand, I've been working at Connie's for several weeks now. Her Passion Vine starts on her patio, travels up the lattice to the deck of the apartment up above. Every couple of days, I'll go up the stairs to see if there are any news ones. Each time, I come home with 10-15 caterpillars in various stages of growth. I now have approximately 60-75 caterpillars in my cage. None of which actually came out of my yard.

I have 1 Monarch that was brought home on a plant from a nursery. He's made his chrysallis and is just about to emerge/enclose (I'm not positive about the correct term there.) We'll just say that he's about to become a butterfly. :-) I can see more and more orange through the chrysalis, which is now almost black. When he made it over 2 weeks ago, it was green.

This photo will give you an idea of how I have my cage set up. Excuse the cat frass in there. I took the photo and when I was reviewing the pictures, realized that I hadn't cleaned the cage yet today. It's an every day job with that many cats in there. Fortunately, I can use a little wisk broom and sweep it into a little dustpan. I was using a damp paper towel, but this seems to work better for me.

The little cages you see I found at Goodwill. I use those for special needs... like the Monarch is in one. Cats that I find on the OUTSIDE of the big cage that have already begun to form their chrysallises get put into that little white cage. That is just so that the others don't mow them down since they are in the "slow down and pause" mode.

The "cages" are wire baskets that usually have coconut liners in them. The cats seem to like having the wires to climb on. Gives 'em sumptin' to do, I suppose, other than just crawl around on the floor and the walls.

Notice the "sentry" on guard for the cage. :-) (Closer photo to follow.)

Janet