The Julia caterpillars are still growing and changing. As I have stated in previous posts, they began hatching on Nov. 13, so they have been eating for about two weeks. It will be interesting to see how much more they grow before making its chrysalis.
My gardens have been full of monarch butterflies either laying eggs, or drinking nectar. This morning I found a good 40 caterpillars on one plant alone. To say my milkweed is dwindling is a huge understatement.
I released a total of six more monarch butterflies yesterday and today. Here is a glimpse of the few.
On November 12, my daughter and I brought home Dryas iulia (Flambeau Butterfly, or the Julia heliconian (longwing) butterfly), eggs. I am happy to say they are growing and changing almost every day.
I fell in love with this butterfly after seeing it at The Butterfly Estates, so when they put word out that they were taking donations for their Julia butterfly eggs, we headed their way. We brought home quite a few yellow eggs, with some starting to hatch the following day.
The host plant is passionvine and I have tons of corky stem for them to eat. The caterpillars have white spots, as well as black spines.
We had four gulf fritillary butterflies emerge in our butterfly house this morning. It was so cool to see the wings through the chrysalis, signaling it was almost ready to emerge.
With these four, we have successfully raised 49 gulf fritillary butterflies. There are more chrysalis in the butterfly house and caterpillar galore in the garden munching away on the maypop passionvine.
This morning four males and one female monarch butterfly emerged in the butterfly house. Bonus, I watched one slowly make its way out of the chrysalis. Of course this happened while I had no camera in hand.
Good news is a walk through the garden this morning revealed more than a dozen baby monarch caterpillars consuming the milkweed. There is no end in sight of more of these beauties in the garden.
To date we have raised 262 monarch butterflies.
