Garden Visitors

The zebra swallowtail is among my favorites, and is a rare visitor to my garden. I was lucky enough to catch this one early in the summer.  It spent a good deal of time going from one flower to another. The female zebra swallowtail lays her eggs on the leaves of the pawpaw tree.

The small buckeye butterfly needs to be seen up close to appreciate the beautiful pattern on its wings.  They aren't as large or showy as some of the garden butterflies, but so pretty when viewed up close.

I usually see giant swallowtails in the garden beginning in late spring.  This year, I did not see one until late July - but it was worth the wait. The giants are rather hard to photograph, because they rarely stop moving.  Like most swallowtails, their wings flutter nearly the entire time that they nectar, and this species seems to spend very little time at each blossom.

When I first saw one of these several years ago, I couldn't believe my eyes.  It looked like a moth in some ways, but flew like a hummingbird. I found out that it is appropriately named the hummingbird moth. It has a long proboscis that it uncurls to drink from the tube shaped blossoms of the flowers, and hovers about like a hummingbird, its wings never stopping.  These often appear in groups of many at a time and love the butterfly bushes, Buddleia.

The fritillaries seemed to especially love the Verbena bonarensis, spending a great deal of time on those blossoms and ignoring all others. 

As with the giant swallowtails, this year's tiger swallowtails didn't begin appearing until much later in the summer than usual.  The tigers especially love butterfly bush and Joe Pye weed. They prefer to nectar on higher blooming species of flowers.

This healthy 5th instar monarch caterpillar had been happily eating  milkweed leaves in the garden until this unwelcome visitor stopped by.  Many caterpillar predators have a sharp pointed proboscis that they use to spear into the caterpillars (or eggs or pupae) to inject a toxin that dissolves the insides of the prey.  Then, they can drink their dinner. 

Here's a close-up photo of the same bug.  He moved from spot to spot on the caterpillar. 

Approaching dinner from a new angle.

This bug, commonly called a Stink Bug found his dinner through one of my sleeved plants. Most of the time, I use a double protection for my caterpillars.  I place sleeves over the potted or cut plants, then place them inside a cage with finer mesh sides.  These caterpillars were simply sleeved over plants in the garden.  This unfortunate caterpillar was on the side of the netting preparing to molt from his old skin when he became a snack for this predatory insect.  Many true bugs suck juices from plants, but over time, some species have evolved and now do the same to caterpillars and other insects.

This is a slightly closer view. You can just see the proboscis piercing the caterpillar. 

Many species of tiny wasps and flies lay their eggs inside caterpillars.  When the egg hatches, the resulting larva feeds in the caterpillar.  Often, the caterpillar will live until it forms its chrysalis, while the larva inside continues to eat and grow. Then the parasite  turns into a pupa itself and  drops out of the butterfly chrysalis.  An adult butterfly never results, but the wasp or fly has completed its cycle thanks to its caterpillar host. Most butterfly eggs laid in the wild never result in butterflies because of predators and parasites.