Gulf Fritillaries

The Gulf Fritillaries are back and all over the garden.  I have five different kinds of Passion Flower vine and they seem to eat all the varieties except for the Bat Wing Passion Vine which is in my front bromeliad garden area.  I have trained one of the Passion Flowers up a 20' White Bird of Paradise cluster in the backyard and it is thriving!  Zebra Longwings lay eggs there as well, but I haven't had any success raising them yet.

We collect eggs, caterpillars and respective host plants and raise them on our back porch protected from wasps, lizards and other predators until they emerge as butterflies.  Then, we release them back into the garden so we always have a steady supply of beautiful, colorful pollinators flitting about.  My husband got me extension tubes for my camera for Christmas and I am just now getting to play around with it, since the butterflies are back in full force and laying eggs.  Above is a Gulf Fritillary egg.  The butterfly laid it on a plastic container my son was holding to collect plants and caterpillars to transport to the porch.  She just flew up and laid it while he was holding it. 

View of the right side of the back wall butterfly garden.  Plants in this picture include: philodendron, sweet almond bush, pineapple sage, geranium, adonidia palm, red passionflower, passionflower, lantana, pentas, agastache, false nettle, dwarf ruellia, buddleia, dwarf cassia, petunia, cat palm, porterweed, salvia, and verbena.  I forgot the name of one of the plants in the lower right with red flowers and there is a rose and an echinacea flower hidden from sight. 

The agastache flowers bloom profusely, smell like licorice and attract hundreds of assorted bees from shiny metallic ones to large, fuzzy ones.  

My kids help with the caterpillars and releasing the butterflies.  We have put together habitats for them to take to the classrooms and share with their classmates which has always seemed to go well.  I am glad they enjoy it and are not afraid of them.  I have purchased a small library of caterpillar identification and butterfly gardening books as we are aware of the type that sting, so the kids don't go touching insects if they don't know what they are.  

We checked on the caterpillars this morning and cleaned up their habitat of old eaten leaves and filled it with clean, fresh leaves.  I have the Gulf Fritillaries in a 10 gallon aquarium/terrarium filled with dirt and stones for drainage.  I took two plastic pots and filled with peat moss/potting soil mix and I take Passion flower vine cuttings which I put in the soil then wet with a mister/spray bottle.  This keeps the cuttings fresher longer.

While we were moving the caterpillars around and tidying up the habitat, my son looked over to see one of the chrysalis hanging on the aquarium lid had opened up and a new Gulf Fritillary came out.  It was still drying its wings by the time we finished with the enclosure so we left her on the lid until her wings dry later, then we will release her into the garden.  It gave me a chance to try out the camera's extension tubes on her wings.

Gulf Fritillary Butterfly on pink pentas

The Polydamas Swallowtail has laid eggs on my Dutchman's Pipe Vine in the garden and we moved some of them to their own enclosure, but I have let a group of them stay outside on the vine.  They are getting much bigger than the ones in captivity.  I hate when I go to check on them and find a wasp greedily munching away on them.