Hello everyone! I am here to rescue you from your winter doldrums. It's a beautiful day here in Tampa. It was a bit cool this morning but was supposed to warm up to around 70. And the sun is shining bright so that's nice. I took a whole bunch of photos today so let's dive right in!
This morning everyone was still hanging out because it was so cool. We had the heat lamp on, but it took everyone a while to wake up. Lots of Julias in the flight cage right now.
And the Zebra Longwings were hanging out, too.
This Julia was just posing too nicely and I couldn't pass it up.
We still have a lot of Malachites but most of them are caterpillars. Here's some of the butterfly for you, though.
I caught a Gulf Frit outside and brought it in. I first saw it on some pentas but couldn't catch it. So I walked around the entire garden trying to capture this thing. I lost sight of it so I just started wandering around. Then, I spotted it again. On the same pentas it was on in the first place! If I had just stayed put for five minutes I could have saved myself a lot of energy. I guess the butterfly figured I needed a workout.
I also spotted this Cassius Blue out in the garden but left him alone except for pictures. I'm not sure what kind of plant it's on. There were plumbagos right nearby. The Cassius Blues never venture far from their host plant, plumbago. This camera also did a pretty good job of capturing this tiny butterfly!
There was an Eastern Black Swallowtail in the flight cage which is really making me wonder if the Swallowtails know something I don't about how this winter is going to go down.
I found an Orange-Barred Sulphur cat outside and set up a tank for him in the lab. I thought he might like the flowers to eat. They always like the flowers this time of year. And see how well they blend in?
The Imperial Moth cats are really big. More on that in a moment. The one in my hand is the true color. I don't know why my camera turned the other one green just because I was holding it in front of our green door. They're all brown caterpillars.
Now, many of the Imperial Moth cats were wandering on the floor of the pop-up and not on the plant. And you know caterpillars do not leave their plant for no reason. I thought maybe they wanted to pupate, but I knew this species burrows under the soil and leaf litter to pupate. So I did what we did with the Hickory Horned Devils (Regal Moths). I took some of our compost and put it in a shallow plastic tub. I placed the cats on it and watched them for about ten minutes. They started burrowing down in it except for a couple. I bent one of the branches over the tub so if they wanted to get back on the plant, they could escape.
I didn't even see this Long-Tailed Skipper until a kid asked me if it was a moth.
And we had two Buckeyes in the flight cage but neither was very willing to pose. But here's one in shadow.
Well, that's the show for today. Think warm thoughts and the butterflies will be back before you know it!
