Scarlet Milkweed Devoured

These stems used to be one of my scarlet milkweed plants.  Seeing the plants like this makes me nervous that we won't be able to feed all the caterpillars.  I hate to say it, but I think we are going to have to let mother nature take it's course since I don't have enough plants for all the babies. 

We put down more seeds in hopes that this will help accommodate the extra activity.   Isabel and I will also be planting some seeds in her friends gardens so the Monarchs can visit them too.Our activity in the garden has increased a lot since the end of April.  Every time I see a butterfly in the garden I am happy and sad all at once. 

My plants need time to recover!

Purple Passion Flower

We added this beauty to our garden this weekend.  Happy Mother's Day to me!  This plant is beautiful and it has a wonderful fragrance.

This plant should attract  Gulf Fritillary, Zebra Longwing, Crimson-patch longwing, Red-banded hairstreak, Julia butterfly, Mexican butterfly and is also a nectar plant.

We would love to have our state butterfly in the garden and the fritillary is beautiful.

Butterfly Stats

When Isabel and I first started this adventure we had a feeling that most of our butterflies were females, but we had not been keeping track.  Curious about our ratio of females to males we went back and looked at our pictures to see who was in the lead and it turns out that we were right; females are more common.  We have released a total of 14 Monarchs ( 5 males and 9 females).

We currently have 8 or 9 chrysalides waiting to hatch.  This past couple of weeks we have had more butterflies than ever, must be the season.  This picture gives you a good idea of how busy we have are.  If you look carefully you can see we have butterflies, chrysalides and caterpillars in this shot.  We have to give a shout out to Daddy who bought us this new home for the caterpillars; he likes to watch them too.  Their new home keeps them all in one place and contained until they are ready for release.  Everyone likes to walk by or sit in front of it and watch the caterpillars do their thing.

GULF FRITILLARY SPOTTED

I found this beautiful GULF FRITILLARY on my lantana plant.  I think it is a male. Just that morning I was second guessing my purchase of the plant because I had not seen any other butterflies and also because after I planted it I discovered it is considered an invasive.  It is incredibly rewarding to see that our little garden is slowly attracting other butterflies. 

The Next Generation

 How many caterpillars do you see?

It has been a while since we posted because we didn't have any butterflies to report on.  As you can see from these photos, we are about to make up for lost time.  We currently have 8 caterpillars, which is very exciting; this is the most we have ever had!

 

These are the caterpillars that we brought in today because they are about one day from making their chrysalis.  The others were left on the plant to grow a bit more.

Isabel and I have discovered the hard way that if we leave them outside they just vanish.






Isabel has lost her interest in the blog at the moment so for now you are stuck with mom.  We may be expanding our content to include some of the other insects and wildlife that we are lucky enough to see here in South Florida.

Caterpillar to Chrysalis

We are excited about this post because we are getting better at recording the steps from caterpillar to butterfly and have figured out how to share it with you.  Yesterday we released another female.  At first, we weren't sure if she was going to make it because she went into her chrysalis while she was kind of small compare to the others that we have seen.  We had two males at the same time and they were big, fat guys when they went into their chrysalis.

Below is the video of her in the fifth and final stage of shedding her skin, this is why she looks green and slimy.  They shed their skin after they have made the top part of their Chrysalis.  This little attachment holds them up while they shed and later holds their chrysalis in place, it is pretty strong. 

http://youtu.be/-AQTKuApgw8

She went into her chrysalis on February 22 and came out a butterfly on March 2.  She ended up falling from the chrysalis attachment (my fault) when the chrysalis was clear, so glad I didn't kill her.  In the first picture you can see her abdomen sticking out of the top which wouldn't happen normally. 

This blog is turning into an education on blogs, posts and videos for both Isabel and I.  Once again we have more videos to share and are having a hard time uploading.  Stay tuned...  We love to hear from you, click on Post Comment to leave an educational or encouraging message.

March 1, 2013 Release

This was a BIG caterpillar!

9:01am

10:12am - already cracked

10:33 am - free at last!

3:26pm - let me out!

going out into the wild.

it's a boy

time to fly!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We released another butterfly today and it was another boy.  This time we posted pictures from the release and pictures of the chrysalis when it was green and before it hatched so that you could see the progression from chrysalis to butterfly. 

My mom took some really cool videos, of the butterfly coming out of the chrysalis, while I was at school.  She let the butterfly hang out in the house, on it's chrysalis shell, until I got back from school.  (Blogger is having video issues right now so we'll have to post them later.)

When we released the butterfly we found another male on the butterfly bush where we released yesterday's butterfly; we think it is probably the same butterfly.

My mom and I love to see the butterflies return and it's awesome when we come outside and see butterflies flying in the garden; it means they are enjoying our garden.