Fauna Friday

Since gardening season is ramping up, today's Fauna Friday features a couple little caterpillars from last year's garden.
Here we have the Saddleback Caterpillar, which I found lurking on my Toad Lily plant.  It's a beauty, but apparently the poisonous sting is quite painful.

Next, introducing the Cabbage Looper.  This little bastard and his buddies nibbled their way through my Roma tomatoes.

Look at what they did to the Romas!  And that's just a few of the tomatoes they ruined.
*kicks tiny green asses*

Caterpillar season

It's caterpillar time again! I found the usual gulf fritillaries on my passion vines and have discovered some caterpillars that are new to me - tomato hornworms:

Three of them were working on decimating my scant bell pepper plants. I never got around to googling them until today and I only did that because, upon checking their status this morning, I discovered 2 were gone and the 3rd was forming a cocoon so I figured I better find out what is it.




At 11:30am, tomato hornworm was doing this. Kinda looks like in Men in Black II where the alien takes over the guy's body & the skin doesn't fit right, heheh.

I got all excited & thought I'd be in for a chance to watch the transformation up close, it's hard to time these things right so I usually miss them.
When I checked on the caterpillar at 1pm sadly the hornworm's typical enemy, the wasp, had found it and eaten most of it. Perhaps that is what happened to the other 2 caterpillars as well...... A shame, the hummingbird moths are so beautiful. Anyway, it is always interesting to witness part of the cycle of nature.

Chrysalis City

We're loaded with caterpillars, chrysalids, butterflies and moths. I keep finding them all around the house and it is very distracting and I filled up the memory stick in my camera.
I have to quit going outside.
I was pulling dead caladium leaves in the garden and keeping an eye out for chrysalids but still I managed to overlook this one - of a sulphur butterfly. It was on the ground and ants would likely have gotten to it soon.
I tied the dead leaf to my bamboo trellis. After about a week the butterfly emerged:














I found this sulphur butterfly chrysalis around back a few days ago hanging from the siding - it's much darker to blend with the colorings here.
It emerged today and hung around on the patio while its wings dried - it had the same wing curl as the one pictured above. After it started flying clumsily, it landed in my hair twice and sat for a few minutes, then flew over to my dead/dying sunflowers stalks.


This is (I believe) a swallowtail butterfly chrysalis, also found in the back hanging from the siding.





Unfortunately I discovered the ants had infiltrated when I went out to check on it. They also took out a gulf fritillary chrysalis in the front yard. %*^@&!!

Gulf Fritillary Butterflies

The passion vine growing on the trellis by our front window has attracted a bunch of Gulf Fritillary butterflies. They are quite pretty and flutter around maniacally. Apparently passion vine is one of their favorite buffets, and they've laid lots of tiny eggs that have recently hatched.


The eggs develop into caterpillars that are bright orange with scary black spikes. They've been chewing up the leaves of my passion vines and I was pleased to discover a few chrysalises several days ago.










Here a larva begins to transform. Its rear end is attached to a vine with the head hanging down, and its bright orange changes to a sickly, milky shade.







Both these chrysalises were hanging from the same bamboo stake. They formed at the same time, but they stayed different colors throughout their span. I don't know why the difference.... is one male and one female?


I went out to check them this morning at 9:30.... the dark chrysalis was now empty (darn, I missed it) and the lighter one's butterfly was already fully emerged and drying its wings. Such a beauty! After a few minutes it flew to the ground and briefly walked on my hand. A lovely way to start my day :-)