Gulf Fritillary Emergence

A few weeks ago we caught 3 Gulf Fritillary caterpillars off of our passion flower plants. Within a few days they were in their chysillis. The last one we were able to actually witness the process. I guess I thought it was more gradual, but after hanging upside down overnight and changing colors a bit, he still looked very much like an upside down caterpillar. But during lunch we saw this whitish color sort of moving up this body and his spines going along with it until it reached the top and the spines fell off. Very different from the cabbage worms.

But on Saturday morning 2 of the chysillises were black and hanging straight down. We missed the first one, saw him just after emerging, still wrinkled.

Just before lunch I walked past and saw the head of the second one wiggling. So they boys came running and we finally got to watch the entire emergence. They were so excited. And if my blind videography skills were any good I would have got it on video. They were amazed how it could fit in such a small space and how quickly it's wings stretched out.

The second one was a flier from the start. We had trouble keeping him on our hands to get to the door. Not that the boys were in any hurry to let them go. But Cohen had the job of taking him out. He didn't stay on his finger very long.

Soon he fluttered up to his ear.

And crawled all the way up to his head. (Don't they have beautiful coloring!)

And finally onto his face.


This morning the third was black and straight. We missed it coming out too. But did get a lot more pictures before sending him out to the cosmos- which seem to be their favorites.

Somehow I think that next spring/summer we will be bringing in every single caterpillar we find.

Caterpillar, Caterpillar....

We were out back a few evenings ago and I was checking the passionflower seed pods to see if they were ready and I found a caterpillar on a weed near the compost/passion flower "area". We- the boys and I- looked it over. Rylan immediately thought it would be one of these (he was right). And Cale guessed that it ate the milkweed (which also resides in the compost pile with the passion flowers). While we were observing Paul found another of the same type on the handle of the pitch fork. So into the house they came....

And here is my lovely new dining room table centerpiece....caterpillars and a froglet...

All I need is to hatch out the remaining Aquasaur eggs....at least it is an interactive nature exhibit while we eat.

So while the boys were in the bath went to make an I.D. It was fairly easy to do....since we found numerous chrysalises in that area of the garden before and we recently found out it's identity at the butterfly garden at the zoo: the Fritillary. The first few places I looked....all I could find was that Fritillaries are very picky and eat only violet leaves. We have no violets around. And then I came across the Gulf Fritillary. And guess what it eats? Passion Flower.

By mid-day yesterday one was already hanging from the ceiling of our butterfly tent and the other was demolishing the leaves. Last night we went hunting and found a third caterpillar and brought it in as well. As of right now all 3 are hanging. The first one's chysalis is completely formed the other 2 have just attached and should be about done by morning.

Hopefully this time around we won't miss the butterflies emerging like we did with the cabbage worms!

More Butterflies

I think this has been the Summer of the Butterfly for us. We started our study with the emergence of the cabbage worms that ate their way through our broccoli. We watched 5 emerge into butterflies, completed a butterfly lapbook and now everywhere we go the boys are shouting out..." I see a tiger swallow tail!" or " There goes a painted lady!" They've learned the names and can ID the 5-6 types we see in our yard. We never did find a Monarch egg/caterpillar this year. And the tobacco hornworm didn't make it, although we did see a dead tobacco moth on the driveway last week and Rylan immediately asked if it was a tobacco moth.

Earlier in the week, on our way outside we found this hanging near the latch to our chain link fence. It was still drying.

We watched it for a few minutes before going off to pick raspberries. Rylan actually stayed with it for about 20 minutes. Scaring the dogs away if they got to close. Cale kept coming back and trying to pick it up and Rylan would try and scare him away too :) He was just getting ready to leave it when it took flight. They watched it fly up to the house and back and landed on our shed.

And upon close inspection, we found about 6 of these hanging on our fence:

We'll have to keep an eye out for them next year so we can catch more of them. I haven't ID'd this butterfly yet- they are small, really pretty markings, dark orange on the outer wings. We'd been seeing them all around out cosmos for weeks.