The bad news is Meg and I both found maybe 500 seed ticks on our pants. I have never seen seed ticks in these kind of numbers around here. The places I have been where seed ticks are found someone usually brings tape to get them off our clothes. We dowsed them in bug spray to get rid of them and then took a very strong shower after the count.
OK now to the title posting about Black Swallowtails. Meg now teaches second grade and as many of you might know second grade usually teaches about life cycles. Tonight we gleaned around 20 of the 38 Black Swallowtail caterpillars in our garden to take to class tomorrow! Our Bronze Fennel finally brought in some Black Swallowtails, we only saw 2 today on the count.
male Black Swallowtail on verbena, from years past in our garden.
female Black Swallowtail on thistle.
Learn more about Black Swallowtails on my main web page at this link. Note when you get to the Black Swallowtail page you will find a second page link on the bottom left and links to similar swallowtails as well as all my pages do.
One other thing I wanted to mention about raising butterflies in the classroom. There are a lot of butterfly farms that sell kits of Painted Ladies and Monarchs from places far away for schools to raise. A lot of butterfly watchers do not approve of bringing in distant populations of butterflies and mixing them into local populations. At least we know these Black Swallowtails were of a local population and once mature releasing them back into the wild will not harm or alter the local population. Good thing Meg has me the butterfly guy as a partner isn't it?
Learn more about Black Swallowtails on my main web page at this link. Note when you get to the Black Swallowtail page you will find a second page link on the bottom left and links to similar swallowtails as well as all my pages do.
One other thing I wanted to mention about raising butterflies in the classroom. There are a lot of butterfly farms that sell kits of Painted Ladies and Monarchs from places far away for schools to raise. A lot of butterfly watchers do not approve of bringing in distant populations of butterflies and mixing them into local populations. At least we know these Black Swallowtails were of a local population and once mature releasing them back into the wild will not harm or alter the local population. Good thing Meg has me the butterfly guy as a partner isn't it?
10 comments:
I love that the caterpillars are the same colours as the butterflies. Which of course makes sense, because it's not magic that the caterpillar morphs into a butterfly. But is SEEMS like magic. :)
I'm so glad that you had a great time with the butterfly count. I always love the pictures that you share. Carla
Very impressive! I can't imagine doing a butterfly count. Can you explain how you make sure you don't count the same butterfly twice?
(This is not a smart-ass comment, I really am curious how this works).
This is all wonderful info Randy...I so wish I could have been there too! I am learning so much from you, BUT I'm still no better at being able to differentiate the swallowtail varieties on my own...it's so hard! At least it is for me:-)
That is a LOT of butterflies. Wonderful shot of those three swallowtails. P.S. The monarchs ate my WHOLE stand of tropical butterfly weed-first time for that!
Oh Randy, those shots of the caters all lined up on the fennel is fantastic! Your other Swallowtails are too of course. What a joy to see so many butterflies in one day!! What fun! I have never join in on a count like that... must see if there is one around here. Yuck to the tick population though... I guess we cannot have increases with the creatures we love without having those we could happily live without! What a pity! Great post! ;>)
What great photos! I love the caterpillar line-up!
Mr. Shady has been growing butterfly milkweed seedlings for his prairie this summer. We've been gone for two weeks, and when we returned last night, he was (nearly) devastated to see that the leaves had been chewed off many of his little plants (as well as many stems). There were Monarch caterpillars that had found these tasty little plants... hopefully the plants will be okay. (I wonder where they'll make their chrysalis?)
I wonder on butterfly and bird counts, how does one not mistakenly count the same bird or butterfly over and over again? That would be my issue with taking part of a counting.
Wow, you have a lot of butterflies in your area this year. We do not seem to have as many as in years past and I find that odd when so many are talking about the massive amounts they are seeing this year. Hum... If my tree is indeed a Cassia Giant, the butterflys can have it!
Great count!
I counted 20 (but there are probably more) BST cats on our bronze fennel. Yesterday, they were in every stage possible. One chrysalis on the fennel and a cat had moved to the adjacent clumping bamboo and was in the J-shape ready to morph.
A Monarch queen laid eggs on the swamp milkweed, but I'm yet to see the cats. I don't know if that big rain washed them away.
I finished the my latest writing assignment (it was for Durham, so I've been over there a lot the last few weeks to check out restaurants, sites, etc.)
The swallowtails in your region are much more colorful than the ones in Hong Kong, so beautiful!
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