Butterfly Gardening Blog

One day while at St. Thomas we visited the The Butterfly Farm. They have a large, enclosed meshed structure with many different species of butterflies from around the world as well as an outside butterfly garden to help attract native butterflies to the area.

Front of building:

Outside gardens to the left and right of the building:

You can also see in the picture above, in the background, is the enclosure where they keep their non-native butterfly species.

The pictures of the Gulf Fritillary I posted last time (Butterflies in the Virgin Islands! (Part 1)) were taken here also.

Next week, I’ll post some pictures of caterpillars and host plants that were at The Butterfly Farm. When we were visiting we met Carmen, who works there, and was very patient with me and with all the questions I asked about the host plants they had!

I took lots of pictures of the plants but unfortunately I don’t remember what some of them are now – hopefully she will be patient with me once again and stop by and ID them for me!

I recently spent a week at the U.S. Virgin Islands, on St. Thomas and St. John. I had really been hoping to see lots of butterfly species that I can’t see where I live.

Sadly, I ended up quite disappointed. I didn’t see many butterflies at all.

I did see quite a few Zebra Longwings at St. John – which was the first time I’ve ever seen one in person, or at least in the wild. I wasn’t able to get any pictures though – they were moving around way too fast!

I saw a Gulf Fritillary on St. Thomas – a first for it too, and was able to get a couple of pictures:

I saw this little guy at St. John – could this be a Tropical Checkered Skipper (Pyrgus oileus)? :

Otherwise I only saw a Monarch now and then, and a white or sulfur fly by on occasion. I think if we could have spent more time at St. John we may have seen more, I don’t know.

I did see some caterpillars, host plants and some other wildlife at the Butterfly Farm at St. Thomas – more about that next week!

The following are what I think were the best photos I got this year – they weren’t all butterflies either!

The good news from this year is that I saw some species I had never seen before! Although, one wasn’t actually in my garden.

That one was the Satyr:

And I had about 9 different species of caterpillars in my garden at the same time!

I had Monarchs, Giant Swallowtails, Pipevine Swallowtails, Black Swallowtails, Spicebush Swallowtails, Tiger Swallowtails, Buckeyes, Duskywings and sulfurs all at once! Ok, technically the duskywings aren’t butterflies – they are skippers.

The really big news was that I finally had a Pipevine Swallowtail lay eggs on my pipevine! I’ve had it growing in my garden for a few years, but this is the very first time I’ve ever had caterpillars! I’ve adults around quite a bit in the past though.

I also found some Buckeye caterpillars this – just the second time I’ve seen them around. I have to dig through my pictures sometime and post them.

I also saw a Zebra Swallowtail caterpillar while hiking – first time I’ve ever seen one!

And then had an adult Zebra Swallowtail hang out in my garden than I’ve ever had one hang before (which wasn’t very long!)!

Here it is on some rattlesnake master:

The not as great part of this season was that I didn’t see adults of some species that usually see. Part of that was my fault though. I don’t think I saw a single Pipevine Swallowtail or Spicebush Swallowtail adult this year. Or a Variegated Fritillary. Maybe not even a Great Spangled Fritillary, I don’t remember now. I think that was all probably due to me not being outside quite as much this year, so I probably just missed them, rather than there being fewer of them. On the other hand, it was a bit cooler this year too.

The other ones I didn’t see were definitely my fault. I hardly had any bananas or other rotting fruit out in the yard this year so I didn’t attract any Viceroys or Red-Spotted Purples.

All together I was pretty happy with how this season turned out. I wish I would have gotten myself outside more though and updated this blog more often, but that’s all my fault!

No time to write a new post today – tree fell down on shed and vegetable garden last night! Read about it and see pictures here: If life hands you a tree make tree-ade.

Wow! I saw lots of butterflies in my garden this afternoon. At least its a lot for where I live. There were 4 large butterflies flying all close to the same time. Three swallowtails were all out there at the exact time even.

And – the best part – a butterfly I’ve only just previously seen fly through quickly and leave: a Zebra Swallowtail! You might remember that I mentioned seeing Zebra caterpillars recently when we were walking around at Shaw Nature Reserve. We had just gotten back from getting groceries and I went back to close the door and saw it right outside on some purple cone flowers. I ran back in and got the camera, but it wasn’t there. I walked all through the yard in the back and everything and thought for certain it had left – but then I found it! I got few pictures of it that were pretty good, they don’t like to hold their wings still though, so it isn’t easy.

It eventually started nectaring way high up on a white butterfly bush of mine. It seemed to prefer it over the purple ones.

Here it is on some rattlesnake master:

And now on the butterfly bush:

And then while I was still watching the Zebra, a yellow form Tiger Swallowtail and a dark form Tiger Swallowtail flew into my garden and starting nectaring on my plants:

And a little while after that a Monarch stopped by. It first was nectaring on my Iron Weed then resting on some pipevine where I was able to get a good picture of it:

A little later I also saw a Buckeye in my husbands ‘Zen’ garden area:

It was awfully hot out there though and I started getting a big overheated and had to come in, last I saw that Zebra Swallowtail was still there. It had to have been out there at least a half an hour. Definitely the longest I’ve ever seen one in my garden!

All together we had a nice day! Of course it was much cooler – now it is 90 something with a heat index of over 100!

After I got home I got stung by a wasp and found a bunch of little ticks on my ankles, but it still didn’t change the fact that we had a nice time earlier.

Hopefully we can go there again sometime when it is a bit cooler!

On the way out, I took this one last picture:

We also saw some cool stuff on some milkweed on the way out. The first were some type of caterpillars that I’ve seen before and were told what they were, but I don’t remember now!

The other is a red beetle that I’ve seen at home too and I’ve been curious about what they are. Any one know?

On the way back from the wetland area when we were walking through the prairie part again we see the weirdest orange stringy stuff growing around the plants in different patches. Anyone know what this stuff is? It doesn’t look like its doing the plants any good. You’ll probably have to click on the pictures to be able to see enough detail of it.

On the way out from the wetland area we saw a big patch of Queen of the Prairie. I wondering if maybe this stuff spreads? I’ve only had my one plant a couple years so I can’t really tell yet.

Then a little while later we were walking along and in the middle of all the green and some yellow now and then, there was a tiny little red flower! I don’t think it was possible to get a picture that shows how cool and pretty it really was in real life. Any one know what the flower is?