Okay! I came on here to post photos and got sidetracked. But now I'm back. My male Orange-Barred Sulphur did indeed come out last night and spent the night in the bathroom. I brought him outside pretty early this morning so I got to take some photos as it wasn't hot enough for him to fly too far. He even posed with me for a few seconds. You can really see the orange bar on the top wings and the little bit of orange on the bottom. He eventually settled on the firebush (more on that later).
Then, I went outside to fetch food and clean everyone up a bit. Here's my Black Swallowtail container before I cleaned it. You can see my one big guy with his posse of little guys. There's even an egg in there.
I think my Spicebush is going to molt and is thinking of turning green. Like I was telling Meredith earlier, you can kind of see the secondary eyespots forming under his skin.
Next up is a lot of shots of my Tersa Sphinx Moth. Like I said, almost as cute as a Spicebush, but not as colorful. At this point, they normally keep their head tucked in unless they are eating or looking for food like you can see him doing on my hand in the one photo. You can see why these eyespots would scare a person who was harmlessly weeding around her Pentas. Yeah, I totally had one do that to me before. I laughed about it afterward. These guys come in green and brown and I've had both so I'm not sure what makes them pick a color. Also, you can see why I was confused when I found it so young and it didn't have all the eyespots I'm used to seeing. But that horn on the back gives them away every time!
I had to relocate some Gulf Frit cats again. They would have starved to death because they had nearly devoured my tiny Passiflora lutea plants. I have some old tomato cages I think I might put around them. That would make it slightly harder for the butterflies to lay eggs, I guess.
Zebra Longwings love firebush. It's one of their favorites.
I was in the backyard and saw a Zebra Longwing doing that butterfly fight with some kind of Swallowtail but I couldn't get a good enough look to see which one it was. Possibly a Giant ST. Anyway, I came back inside and then went out front because I wanted better lighting to take some more caterpillar photos. And everyone suddenly decided to show up, including this Black ST. This is a female so I'm blaming her for being the shameless hussy whose children I'm raising.
Remember folks, you can tell the Black ST by the "bullseye" on the lower wing - that's the reddish-orange dot with the black dot inside it. No black dot inside it, not a Black ST.
So the caterpillars I wanted to photograph were the Zebra Longwings. Remember I said they start out kind of orange before they turn white? Well, here they are a pale orange but they get this sort of silvery look to them that's hard to describe. Look at the lowest caterpillar in the first picture and you can kind of see what I mean. They'll probably turn pure white once they molt again. Also, I noticed their frass is much lighter since I'm feeding them Passiflora suberosa. I guess its leaves are more yellow-green.
Then, a Long-Tailed Skipper came and was just basking. I love when they show off the turquoise on their wings!
I had two Zebra Longwings flying around the firebush apparently fighting over territory. The Orange-Barred Sulphur just sat there through it all. You can see both the Zebra and the Sulphur in the second picture.
And I suppose it isn't a party until a Gulf Fritillary shows up so here it is.
Meanwhile, I'm back inside waiting for my Cloudless Sulphur to emerge. With all those dots, it looks like the more spotted summer form. Or are they more spotted in winter? Well anyway, this one has more spots than usual which kind of threw me until I went on the internet to compare. They're usually near spotless.
I have them sitting here on my desk so I can watch them.
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