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your butterfly reports?
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Posted by birdgardner NJ/ 6b (My Page) on Sat, Jul 21, 07 at 17:10
| Here, in south Somerset co., monarchs are more and early compared to last year, swallowtails, admirals, purples and anglewings about the same, fritillaries, checkerspots, ladies and skippers fewer. |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: your butterfly reports?
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I'm finally seeing more activity from the monarchs. I had 4 tiny caterpillars on my milkweed last Saturday, only to have them MIA on Sunday, and haven't seen them since. My established milkweeds don't look good at all this year, so this may be a problem. My wintersown incarnatas look good, so if I do get some more cats, I'll have food for them.
I have a few yellow swallowtails, monarchs, & red admirals fluttering around right now. I also saw a black swallowtail this morning, something I don't really get to see that often. Now I'm impatiently awaiting the siting of a hummingbird moth... |
RE: your butterfly reports?
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| We've had Snowberry Clearwing Moths happily hovering around our butterfly bush for over a month now in southern Hunterdon county. |
RE: your butterfly reports?
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| We've had hummingbird moths - black and yellow, and olive and rust, for about a month also. Which are the Snowberries? We brought in four black swallowtail cats from the fennel to raise, and we're looking for monarch cats now - mama monarchs have been taking an interest in the butterflyweed but so far, none. |
RE: your butterfly reports?
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| Snowberry is the yellow one with the black sideburns. It is the most common in my garden. The big news this summer was the massive invasion of Red Admirals. There were more than a thousand at Palmyra Cove Nature Park one day and someone on the beach reported about a thousand coming in off the ocean. Overall numbers of the everything else have seem depressed to me (other than Broad-winged Skippers in Cape May County). The low numbers can probably be blamed on our very dry summer. |
RE: your butterfly reports?
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| I collected 7 monarch caterpillars yesterday (6 teeny tiny, 1 larger), and saw plenty of eggs! Last year I found/collected my first monarch cat at the end of August! |
RE: your butterfly reports?
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| Walking the dog in an area park a short while ago, I came across about 20 Cabbage Whites, 6 Tiger swallowtails and 3 of one of the black swallowtails (assume they were either black or spicebush) puddling in the mud. Also, two male goldfinches were drinking from the brook. A really pretty sight. |
RE: your butterfly reports?
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Tracey, I'm glad you've got monarch cats. I found a little one today, and I was going to come back for it after I picked blackberries, and I got back just in time to see a hornet fly off with it! And couldn't find any more. :(
Guess they don't taste bad to hornets. There weren't any on the wild milkweed in the field either. But I had one BST from the early summer generation, which has flown, and have 10 from the midsummer generation of various sizes, from a little more than an inch, to chrysalis. Does anyone know if they all going to fly this summer, or will some hibernate in chrysalis? Ward, it's funny you've had a very dry summer maybe fifty miles away - it's been a wet summer here, with good downpours every week or ten days. The grass is soft and lush and green, and I don't remember it being that way in a decade. |
RE: your butterfly reports?
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This was a great butterfly weekend (well, Saturday anyway). I had seen about 5 yellow swallowtails all over the garden; 3 were going to town on my Pink Delight buddleia. It's rare for me to see so many at one time. Also two monarchs were duking it out; I couldn't tell the sexes, but I'm assuming one was the male that's been doing laps around my house. The monarch also had issues with one of the swallowtails, but the eventually settled their differences. Saw a few Red Admirals and alot of smaller tanish butterflies.
As for the monarch cats; I had 11, but am down to 10. One was so small that I squished it while changing the milkweed leaves! My first casualty. But, I've got one big fat happy camper that should be pupating soon.
As for my memory, I didn't find my first in late August last year; it had to have been late July, since I ended up taking my very first cat with me on vacation to LBI last August! It looks like I'll have more to bring this year! |
RE: your butterfly reports?
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| I found three more monarch cats, two about half an inch long and the other teeny. I separated them by size, but one of the bigger ones crossed over to the teeny one's stem, and the teeny one isn't there any more. :( |
RE: your butterfly reports?
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| I've seen black swallowtails, yellow tiger swallowtails, monarch or viceroy, Gray Hairstreak
 and American Lady.
 This year, I didn't see any black swallowtail cats without my parsley patch. Since they hung out on the rue last year, I thought they would be OK with that. I guess not unless I just missed them. |
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