It’s truly incredible to witness nature. Here are two gulf fritillary butterflies mating. They let me take a few photos before the male carried her away into our neighbors yard.
I have witnessed the mating “dance” before. The male will “clap” his wings over and over, open and close, letting out pheromones over the female. Eventually the female’s antennae will find its way between the male’s wings, which initiates the courtship.
The zebra longwing, or zebra heliconian, butterfly sipping on some blue porterweed. This beauty was named after the stripped pattern of the wings, which also is a warning to predators that it is toxic. According to the Florida Museum of Natural History the cyanogenic glycoside chemicals taste bitter, and come from the passion vine host plant.
This butterfly is unique as the male zebra longwing will mate with a female before it emerges from its chrysalis. Once the female is found, the male will visit the chrysalis repeatedly. The female will emerge during the process, expanding her wings as the mating goes on for several hours.
The butterflies can be found from Peru to as far north as Texas and Florida.
The gorgeous, graceful zebra longwing butterfly has laid an incredible amount of eggs on the maypop passion vine lately. In every photograph you can see the yellow eggs that she is leaving behind. Although she will lay one at a time, I typically find a cluster of them in the same location on the new growth of the plant, or the trendrils. I love spotting the caterpillars in the garden, as they are white with black spots and spikes.
If you have visited my page before, you know that the zebra longwing butterfly is capable of laying eggs for many generations each year.
The zebra longwing butterfly was officially designated as the state butterfly for Florida in 1996.
The cloudless sulphur, phoebis sennae, has been one of the most challenging butterflies to photograph in the garden. Today I was able to capture a few good photos of her laying eggs on my cassia tree.
I read that under the yellow scales of their wings, hides a yellow-green layer of scales.
The caterpillars will eat leaves from both the cassia, and senna plants, both members of the pea family. I have noticed that the caterpillars change colors throughout their instars, which I read is dependent on the color of leaves, blooms they eat. If the leaves are green, the caterpillar is dominantly green. If the consume yellow blooms they change to that color.
Our butterfly house has slowed down quite a bit with monarch’s this month. It’s slowly filling up again with caterpillars.
Today No. 227 emerged and was successfully released into our butterfly garden and stayed for awhile, so I could capture her beauty.
Did you know that the monarch weighs less than a half a gram with a wingspan of 4 inches?
