Tag Archive | Butterflies
The Vanishing Butterfly
It is May on Long Island and as I walk down a trail that winds through oak woodlands, my attention is drawn to flashes of blue about a foot or two above the ground. As I get closer, I see that the flashes are from a metallic blue colored butterfly fluttering across the trail. I […]
Delightful Backyard Butterflies
I planted fire-bush shrubs in our backyard to attract butterflies and hummingbirds with great success. The flowers are a good source of nectar for these creatures. cloudless sulphur butterflies and zebra long-wings are two of the butterflies that frequent these bushes. We see Ruby-throated Hummingbirds too in the early morning and at dusk flying from […]
How Milkweed Helped the Tiger Swallowtail!
Monarch butterflies continue to find the milkweed plants in our garden to lay eggs. Soon, there are only green sticks left to our milkweed plants dotted with hungry caterpillars. Anne counts 15 monarch caterpillars of various sizes. We find a small one crawling on our hot concrete driveway looking for more milkweed plants to eat. […]
A Queen is Born!
The queen caterpillars we found on our milkweed plants have grown, pupated and are about to hatch. We see one of the chrysalids (butterfly pupa) turn from a spring green to a dark color signifying the impending birth of the adult butterfly. Soon the butterfly breaks free of the chrysalis, hangs on to the shell […]
Voracious Caterpillars
My wonderful wife, Anne, ventures out one morning to check on the milkweed plants growing alongside our home. To her dismay the leaves on the milkweeds are nearly gone. Upon closer examination, Anne discovers the reason why. There are a dozen or so monarch caterpillars on the plants eating the leaves, the seed pod casings […]
Mating Monarchs
I caught these two butterflies in action. Once the eggs are fertilized, the female will seek members of the milkweed family to lay its eggs. It will not be long before the eggs hatch and we find caterpillars munching on the milkweeds in our garden.
