Butterflies

[Ron Reefman]

We live in SW Florida and have been growing both 'host' plants and 'nectar' plants for the 8 to 10 common butterflies that call SW Florida home. On a typical busy day we get lots of the 3 to 5 most common species. There are days when the time of year is right and the weather is just right, that our back yard looks like a major city airport for butterflies. Literally 20 to 30 butterflies roaming around the plants in the yard. I could share lots of photos.

However, this time I'm just going to show one pair. The Giant Swallowtail isn't one of the most common species in our yard. They are especially interesting to us in that they are 25-50% bigger than the biggest of all the others (Gulf Fritillaries, Goldrim Swallowtails, Monarchs, Sulphurs, Peacocks and Zebra Longwings). And the top side of their wings are a near perfect reverse color of the bottom side of the wing. Most, but by no means all other butterflies have the same pattern on the top and bottom.

My wife caught these two Giant Swallowtails doing the wild thing. She happened to be out with her camera taking photos of the flowers. Our yard is 20% grass pathways around the 80% that are gardens full of flowers, bushes, bromeliads, orchids and trees. It's very common for us to see two butterflies chasing each other around the garden attempting to mate. But it's way less common to catch it actually happening. Especially because the entire process only takes 30 to 60 seconds. So catching two of the way less common Giant Swallowtails doing it was a real treat. Now we have to hope she lays her eggs on our Wild Lime tree (their native host plant).

 

[Waters]

Those are really cool.....we mainly just see Monarchs...I never see anything as exotic as these :)

 

[Mattrg02]

We’re raising them, from egg to butterfly, and monarchs :-)

A ton of work and a lot of heartbreak along with reward of seeing them fly away. We’ve tagged some so hoping to see the monarchs make it to Mexico.

 

[Crabs McJones]

That's really cool! :)


We did something similar. My daughter wanted to do a "summer project"
Almost 20 butterflies later lol.

 

[Ron Reefman]

The Monarch chrysalis is really cool with the gold line near the top.

We leave most of our caterpillars out on their host plants for the entire process. But every couple of months we bring in a branch of host plant and some caterpillars so we can see them form their chrysalis and then 10 to 14 days later watch them emerge as new butterflies. That's a great time to take photos as they are usually perfect specimens and they can't fly until their wings dry out. So you can put them on any beautiful flower in the garden and get in as close as you want with the camera since they can't fly away and they stay still with their wings spread wide apart.

We've seen Gulf Fritillaries do the wild thing regularly. These are one of the most common butterflies in our yard.



A close up of a Sulphur.


A couple of Monarch pics.


And finally, 3 Zebra Longwings, the state butterfly of Florida. This was a good as as these guys like shade and our neighborhood (other than our yard) has very little of it. So seeing 3 emerge at one time was special!