Daily pictures #96

We came from here, http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1257230/,

Monarch on A tuberosa (gay butterflies). Actually 2 monarchs, a male and a female.

Bruce

Didn't get it framed well, but i like the colors

Thanks, Bruce. The pictures are stunning. No matter the framing. :)

Beautiful colors! I have never had much luck with the Tuberosa dispite it being native here. But I have blooms on one plant this year!
Then I have a emongus (sp) A. Syrica (I think) that refuses to bloom but gets 4 foot tall and spreads underground! Grrrr!

No photo of course, but today I saw a hummingbird moth on my tall purple verbena. It sort of made my day. :)

Those are always a sweet surprise.

I haven't seen one yet, but I saw a common buckeye today. Didn't get a photo though.

Got a pic in my mind though! LOL!

This silly cat didn't have enough sense not to form it's chrysallis on the glass, but it made for an interesting series of photos this morning.

Bruce

The rest of the story!

It did you a favor!!!

Quite the stunning model. I have a series of photos like this. Never tire of seeing this miracle. Thanks. :)

Nice Bruce! I am so excited to be getting some rain this morning. The Gulf is lit up with showers and thunderstorms that are rolling through my part of the world this morning. Now if we can just keep from having a hurricane...things might be looking up!

Still slow on butterflies in my neck of the woods. I have seen some cloudless sulphurs, GFs, and a Queen or two, but very few Swallowtails of any type....where did they go???

Russell

Send some rain up here, please.

Saw an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail yesterday and some cabbage whites. I have noticed more moths too, but they won't hold still long enough for me to ID. :)

hello all- so many beautiful pics to catch up on!
can't believe i have not been on here for so long. In the past 2 weeks i have not seen much in the way of BFs. I found a bstcat on my dill, and i tried to put a mesh cover over the plant to watch the transformation, but it must have escaped after a few days. Sad. 2 days later i found a Luna moth caterpillar under our pecan tree, which immediately after going into a more secure container spun itself a cocoon and i am waiting for it to be ready in about 2-3 weeks. Happy.
I have wanted to see a luna moth my whole life. I am very excited.
also, i finally learned how to do pictures, so here is one from last year....

Nice pic....look forward to more now that you know how. If you try to load more than one and it doesn't work, try making them smaller.

Bruce that was great, I enjoyed the series of photos shots.

I have lots of tiger swallowtails here. Of course Monarchs, and now I see some good sized cats again on my milkweed. A few Zebras, which I didn't ever see any last year, but no way near the amount I had two years ago. Not seeing any sulphurs lately, but did early spring. Lots of little moths.

I asked about the Milkweed bug awhile back. Until this year I've never seen them on my milkweed. I wondered if they were a "good bug" or "bad bug". Someone did respond that they didn't pay much attention to them and just let them be. I let them go for now an just ignored them, after all I couldn't really see they were harming anything. One or two of them quickly turned into more than a dozen and they kept getting larger. I started to notice my seed pods on my milkweeds were turning yellow, and eventually all withered up and never released seeds. I did some research and soon discovered these bugs are seed sap-suckers. I depend on milkweed that so easily re-seeds all over my garden as a host plant for my Monarchs. So I decided they are "bad bugs" and easily within a few minutes destroyed each one of them. They try to out run, but I easily could grab them and they met between my foot and the pavement. I lost all my seeds and will only hope new seeds will emerge in time to give me some more plants for the season. I now look for these bugs and won't allow them in my garden anymore.

Thanks Sherri for sharing your knowledge of the bugs with others. I've many MW's seedpods being formed thus far. Should you need some, dmail me.

Saw a pair of Silver-spotted skippers this evening, I'm so glad. Second pix of MW and other flowers in the garden awaiting for butterflies. lol

I spotted a Silver Spotted Skipper this afternoon, but had a hose in hand not a camera.

sunkissed....I don't like the MW bugs either. I will thump them into a cup of soapy water when I see them.

Thanks Lily, I do have some seeds saved in the fridge..I should be okay. Nice shots of the skippers.

Wooohoooo!!! I found my 1st 2 BST cats. this morning, that made my day! 2nd pix is the Manduca sexta/Carolina Moth's in its final phase before eclosure. I'm a happy camper ... errrr homecationeer-- that's! (grinning from ear to ear).

Nice shot of the skipper Lily, I've just started seeing them but haven't had a camera at the right time.

That is cool Lily. I have a dill plant but never seen any cats.

Thanks Bruce on the skipper, thus far I haven't seen many of them compared to last year. Sherri, keep watching the hostplant. The BSTs will surely find them sooner or later. By the end of the day yesterday I found a 3rd one. I grow both dills and parsleys for these butterflies.

Still really quiet here! I will be running my monitoring route tomorrow, so hope to have some decent numbers there. At least match or surpass same time last year I hope.

Well maybe I had some on my parsley. We got home from a week vacation and both my parsley plants were totally eaten down to nothing. :)

Even with all this wind today I saw a Giant Swallowtail flying around, poor thing was having a difficult time but was persistent to land on some penta flowers. Once there it hung on good, I tried snapping photos by wind moving it around too much.

I came home to find all sorts of BST flitting around. Guess I just needed to go away! lol

Hi everyone, I don't have a new pix to share, but while watering my 'portable butterfly garden' tonite, I spotted another BST cat. on my dills. It must be a 4th instar. Sherri, I brought the cats. indoor hoping to protect them from the predators such as wasps and birds ect. I've both dills and parsley in the little cage for the future butterlies, two of the small caterpillars still hung on the dills where I found them. The 3rd one was gently moved onto the parsley-- that's where it stayed. So they do switch their diet. Hah, I said all that about BST cat's hostplant to say this; YOU may have a lot of BSTs while you were off on vacation. lol

4th BST cat. on the counting. :))

My swamp milkweed is doing well this year, after a slow start, and finally yesterday a Monarch came back. Just a month or so ago I saw one repeated circling the end of my pond, as if it were saying "where's my home?" I have 2 Butterfly Weed plants near the milkweed, as well. Who is the guy visiting my Lavender? I'll learn all their names eventually!

edit...
I should have looked closer at one of the previous pics in this thread... Silver Spotted Skipper?

This message was edited Jun 27, 2012 10:19 AM

BST on the echinacea...seeing them everyday now!

Sallie....That is a Silver-spotted Skipper in your third picture.

Sallie your lavender is just as pretty as any butterfly! Wish I could grow fields of it. It doesn't like my soil . . .

I was happy today with just my usual white cabbage moths dancing around. I have hundreds of honey bees and other weird pollinators including bumbles and tiny bees and weird critters collecting pollen. I'm not exactly beekeeping so I don't know if that would be the right forum to put up my feets, but still, the sign on the gate says Monarch Waystation, so I'll just keep expecting them.

I know about the MW beetles AND the bugs. Neither are particularly favorable creatures, but as I learn they only are interested in the seed pods, I am not concerned. Also - the damned aphids - I figured that MW has been dealing with aphids for as long as there have been monarchs. The plants start looking ragged, but there are so many plants and only one of me, so if they get a couple of seed pods, they're welcome to them. :P

I do garden for wildlife, after all. You know there are some biologists out there who would get into a serious philosophical discussion about why we try to eradicate some (i.e. bacterial critters) and not others. They believe every organism has a right (?!) to exist and plays SOME important role in the ecosystem. That may be true. I'm not an ecology expert, so I obviously digress.

Another oddity - must be baby bunnies snapping the tops off of my poke MW and my purple MW. The fruits of my labor from last year - rather disappointed, particularly about the purple, but again - the wildlife. (thru gritted teeth).

By the way - for anyone else who winter-sows . . . those milk jug TOPS also act as nice biospheres for struggling seedlings and/or when you cut the tops off they can also be nice collars to protect against the dreaded baby bunnies.

Will go and play with the bugs now. I am indeed jealous of the HOMECATIONEEERS among you. ;)

A.

p.s. still seeing darty skippers and the silver spotted skipper. AND in one of the winter-sow containers I had abandoned for lack of germination, 3 Christmas Sennas came up so I guess I am growing them after all (dam, dam DAM!!!).

Okay you all, I need your to help to help out a friend.

This is a photo of a photo they took of a moth outside their home here in Indiana. It was a large moth. She would like to have an ID on this moth. Her adult son was very much into bugs and loved moths in particular since he was a child. He committed suicide the Friday before Memorial Day......and last week this moth showed up and hung around all day. She believes it was a sign from him that he is okay now.

I told her I would try my best to find out the name of this moth for her so she can make a label for the photo.

Thanks for any help
Claudia

Claudia:

So sorry for your friend's loss. The moth is an Imperial Moth (Eacles imperialis).

Dale Clark
Dallas county Lepidopterists' Society
www.dallasbutterflies.com

Claudia....prayers for your friend's family. Believing in the sign is a small thing that can bring much joy in the future. I know it isn't the same, but each one of my dogs that have left me since I began gardening has a butterfly that reminds me of them. My first was a white pekinese mix that had long ears that flopped when she ran...Cabbage whites are my mariposo Chelsea to me. (smile)

Thank you so much Dale for the ID. I will pass this on to her.

Shelia, that has to be such a comfort for you.....it hurts when we lose anyone or anything that we love.

This isn't quite the same thing. Well sort of, but I situated a memory garden for my Lhasa that passed in December 2010 in the back of the yard where she liked to poo.

Our new puppy likes to poo in exactly the same spot. I'm not sure what it's a sign of. Sorry. I'm a jerk.

A.