More butterfly eggs!
I’ve been posting a awful lot about wildlife other than butterflies around our yard! Its still far from the peak season for butterflies around here – and all the other critters seem to be everywhere now.
I was quite excited however this Sunday when I saw what was either a Question Mark or Comma flying around the garden. I could tell right away it was female as she was landing briefly on various plants trying to find the right one to lay eggs on – and then she flew over to my hops vine!
We’ve had lots of Question Marks and Commas around here the past few years, but this was the first time I’d ever seen one looking like they were going to lay eggs.
I went and got a camera and luckily she was still around when I got back! I couldn’t get her to sit still for a picture and eventually started looking over the hops to see if I could find any egss. I couldn’t see one anywhere – then all of a sudden she comes flittering by and lays an egg right on top of a leaf just a few inches in front of me!
Of course, I couldn’t get the camera ready in time!
I did watch her lay some more eggs though too. I saw her lay one on a pipevine leaf, which is pretty odd. Pipevine should be toxic to any butterfly except Pipevine Swallowtails. The vine is growing right next to the hops – could that have confused her?
And according to James Scott (‘The Butterflies of North America’ 1986) both Question Marks and Commas lay their eggs on the underside of the leaves, the ones I found on the hops were all on the tops of the leaves. I know she laid some more on the higher parts of the vine too though, but I can’t get up that far to find them – perhaps some of those are on the undersides of the leaves. Apparently they sometimes lay them stacked in piles, but all I saw was singly laid eggs. I will have to check the plant again more closely.
At any rate she never did sit still enough for me to even be able to tell which she was – a Question Mark or a Comma. And the eggs are too small for me to be able to photograph with the digital camera we have. I took some pictures of them with a film camera though, so it will be a while before I get them back.
I did get one quick picture of her from a distance though – its too hard, for me anyway, to make out what species she is:
(Technorati Tags: butterfly, butterflies, eggs, hops, Question Mark, comma)
