Oh my gosh, I wish I could send you guys some Monarchs because they are decimating my milkweed. A large group of the ones in my butterfly garden seemed to have known how to travel from the Tropical Milkweed back to the Giant milkweed because they've eaten the former and now they're destroying the latter! In good news, my milkweed bug problem seems to be solved because there's no milkweed left for them to be on! Like 95% of the cats are big enough to go into their chrysalis which is what they'll do if they run out of food so I'm not too concerned. And despite my alarm, I still have a few pockets of milkweed they haven't found yet. Oddly enough, no one is on my Giant Milkweed right in front of that house and that stuff is like seven feet tall! But it always seems to be the last milkweed they use. Anyway, here's a pic showing the lean times in the garden.
What has the world come to when three caterpillars have to share the same stalk! I would take them to the museum but despite having just ordered a bunch of milkweed, we actually don't seem to have very much. It's weird how nature works like that. You buy it, they eat it.
In better news, there is plenty of Senna ligustrina (Privet Cassia) for the sulphurs to eat. As you may recall, I found two Orange-Barred Sulphurs earlier this week. The huge one went into his chrysalis like two days later but the other guy is still eating. Well, today I found two Cloudless Sulphurs. Despite the one munching on my flower buds, he was still a green-form caterpillar which is their usual look.
The other one was practicing his yoga. Seriously, I believe certain caterpillars are hardcore yoga enthusiasts. Just watch a Spicebush Swallowtail cat doing that pose where they stick their head and chest up to the sky. It's cute but I always wonder why they're doing it? Ok, here's the other Cloudless Sulphur. See how their green color really blends in well? Apparently, the stripes break up their body line to make it hard for predators to detect them.
I didn't think I was going to get any Monarchs to settle down long enough for a picture but this one obliged. There were at least three or four I think, flying around. I also had a Gulf Fritillary flying but he only stopped long enough to harass the Monarch in this photo and then he flew over the house.
Here's one of the Gulf Frit cats on my Passiflora suberosa. I ended up not having to move any of them to the other Passiflora since I still have enough of this one left. But there are still several cats eating on it. I'll have to keep a close eye to make sure I don't get a second wave. The poor plant needs time to recover! FYI, these guys have spines but don't sting but like I tell all the kids (and adults) at the museum, if you don't know what it is, don't touch it!
And this one is kind of blurry probably because the lighting in my house isn't so great. But this is the Orange-Barred Sulphur's chrysalis. I'm going to take all the Sulphur cats to the museum tomorrow but I'm keeping the chrysalis so look forward to its emergence. FYI, it's on cheesecloth. I keep my cats in those plastic critter keepers but they have slots in the top that smaller (and even medium-sized) caterpillars can crawl through. (Ask me how I know!) So I put cheesecloth over it to keep them from escaping. And as you can see, the cats really seem to like to attach to it to make their chrysalises. So it works on two levels.
