Pipevine cats

So last June, after a slew of pipevine (Battus philenor) caterpillars devoured our lone pipevine plant (Aristolochia fimbriata), we drove to Austin and bought two more from the Natural Gardener. Well, they've torn through one plant already and will likely finish up the second. Which leaves one plant. Good luck, guys!  

Click on this photo to make it larger and see how many black caterpillars you can find. There's at five, maybe more.

Even seed pods get eaten!

A caterpillar's stripping what's left of the leaves on this plant.

Battus philenor tends to be social. This photo isn't the greatest, but there are three cats on this one stem.

I shook out some seeds (and caterpillar poop) from a couple of seed pods in hopes that we can germinate new pipevines to plant. Aren't the seeds cool?

Pipevine eggs!

Yesterday afternoon, I was in the Meadow, helping James with his newest project (stay tuned). In between assisting, I pulled snailseed vine (lots of it) and other weedy stuff that's overrunning the rocked-in bed that encloses several live oaks. While I was working, a pipevine swallowtail fluttered past and landed near one of the three non-native pipevines (Aristolochia fimbriata) that we planted. She touched on a henbit, then a dayflower, then a pipevine leaf. Over and over again she landed and touched, landed and touched on plants. Nothing seemed to meet her approval. I stopped pulling and watched until finally she found a pipevine stem near me that she liked. Bent at my waist, head upside down, I kept watching while she deposited seven orangish eggs. I was thrilled!

"Hey, do the boys want to see some butterfly eggs that were just laid?" I hollered across the street at my neighbors. They were sitting on their front deck with their two grandsons. "I just saw them being laid!" 

In a flash, Caleb and Clayton dashed over and crouched down next to me. I showed them the new eggs and explained how pipevine swallowtail butterflies ALWAYS lay their eggs on pipevine leaves. Then I showed them a little pipevine caterpillar that I'd spotted. 

"Would you like to come back when the caterpillars get bigger? They're REALLY cute!" The boys nodded and smiled. "OK, I'll let your grandmother know." 

The little info that I found on incubation says the eggs take 10 days to hatch. Let the countdown begin!

Large yellow underwing

I spotted this caterpillar on dead fall aster limbs. It's a large yellow underwing larva (Noctua pronuba), a European species introduced to Canada in 1979. Great camouflage artist, eh?

December 1 and still lots going on

Yes, Gulf fritillary moms are still laying eggs, even on passionflower stems with hardly any leaves left. So Sheryl checks certain vines knowing this about fritillary moms and transports their cat kids to vines with plenty of leaves (like the two below).

Gulf fritillary larva

A younger Gulf fritillary larva

Black swallowtail larva on rue

Copper canyon daisy still hosting variegated fritillaries (above left), white-checkered skippers (right) and phaon crescents.

A monarch spotted TODAY on the fragrant mistflower!

LOADS of queens along with American ladies and other nectaring insects on the fragrant mistflower.

Those crazy fritillary moms

I wouldn't have believed it unless I'd actually SEEN when and how it happened. I was outside awhile ago, working in the back yard, when I noticed some Gulf fritillary kids on bare passionflower vines. Previous brood had gobbled up the leaves! So I carefully moved several to vines that had plenty of chow. Right when I was depositing one, a Gulf fritillary mom fluttered up, landed on a leaf and stuck her rear up in the air. Huh? 

Then I did a double take!!

She laid an egg on a STRAND OF SPIDER SILK! 

I had to go get my camera because who in their right mind would ever believe me if I told them what I'd observed! See for yourself!

That Gulf fritillary mom is right up there with the one that two years ago laid an egg on our chain-link fence. I blogged about that one, too:  "This butterfly needs glasses."

And now I have a little dilemma. Do I move the egg or just leave it be?

Peyton and friends find a caterpillar

Peyton, Davis, Zach and A.J. (left to right)

Awhile ago, I was at my desk, editing butterfly images, when someone knocked on the front door and rang the door bell.

"Miss Sheryl! We found a caterpillar!" Davis exclaimed. He's the little brother of Peyton, our seventh-grade neighbor. "Can you come and look at it?"

"Sure," I said, "let me get my camera."

So off I went. Peyton and his buddies, A.J. and Zach, were seated on the gravel along the street in front of Peyton's house. Everyone was bent over their find....a chubby caterpillar.

"Oh, that's just like the ones that James and I found in the Meadow a week or so ago!" I said. "A white-lined sphinx caterpillar." Then I suggested that we carry it to the Meadow, so it could do what it needed to do in a safer location. They agreed. So I carried the caterpillar in my hand (yes, it tried to chomp me a few times) while we trekked over to the Meadow. I set it down, and it started digging. Which is what the boys had said it was doing when they first found it. Hmm, that's interesting....

The boys and I left the caterpillar atop the ground....

Before they headed home, we looked up the caterpillar in Peyton's Peterson First Guide to Caterpillars of North America (which Davis had made a special trip into his house to get...thanks, Davis!) "This species overwinters as a pupa in the soil," states the species account. 

By golly, that's what our caterpillar needed to do. And it was doing exactly that--digging into the ground! Later, my daughter's boyfriend, Benjamin, and I walked out to check on the caterpillar.

"I've never seen a caterpillar dig before," he said as we watched it scoop and gnaw at the ground. Cool!

When I returned later with my camera, it had made a lot of progress....

An hour or so later when I returned, it was out and about, digging and moving dirt.

I watched it dig for a little while....

And then it went back into a resting state? I guessed that's what it was doing when it went into a U shape.

After supper, James, Benjamin, Lindsey and I walked back out to the Meadow to check on the caterpillar one more time. It was GONE! Pretty neat, eh?

Life on a silverleaf

Maybe a clavate tortoise beetle (Plagiometriona clavata)
See UPDATE--adult beetle below

That's all I have to do...walk around the yard or the Meadow, and I'll see something. Like yesterday, I noticed something chewing on the silverleaf nightshade (Solanum elaeagnifolium). I bend down for a closer look, and what do I see? A very odd critter!

So I posted a photo on Bugguide.net, thinking it was a mealy bug species of some sort. NOT! It's a tortoise beetle larva! But not just any beetle larva, mind you!

"The larva is a typical tortoise beetle type, but very unlike most other beetle larvae," according to Featured Creatures, posted by the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agriculture. "The last abdominal segment has a special 'fecal fork' which permits the attachment of dried fecal matter. This fecal mass is carried over the dorsum in the same form as 'trash bugs' (Neuroptera), and presumably offers a degree of protection through camouflage. The body is green, flattened, and almost entirely fringed with whitish multispiculate projections."  

I also spotted what I thought were three species of caterpillars on the nightshade, but it may just be two instead.....

Salt marsh moth (Estigmene acrea) or a fall webworm (Hyphantria cunea). Even the experts can't agree....yet. I think it's a salt marsh.

Some galls....

Probably a Heliothis sp.

And maybe another Heliothis sp.

I  returned to the Meadow and found MORE life on silverleafs...
 

 A gall....

A treehopper in the genus Micrutalis...thank you, Bugguide.net!

Same treehopper...

 And a leafhopper assassin bug (Zelus renardii) lurking among the leaves....thanks again, Bugguide.net experts for the ID help.

UPDATE, NOVEMBER 3, 2012

I'm pretty sure this is the adult tortoise beetle!

UPDATE November 15–Eggplant tortoise beetle (Gratiana pallidula)

This is why we don't mow the Meadow!

We went outside after supper and wandered in the Meadow, where we watched butterflies. Dragonflies. Damselflies. So much going on! Then I happened to spy something yellow in the grass. A sulphur? Well, sorta. A banded argiope had caught it on her web! Low in the grass, the spider had spun her orbweb. Awesome.

You could barely see her in the grass. She blended in well.

Across the Meadow, we spotted another argiope on her web! She was just about to nab a moth, but it got away. Good for the moth but not for the spider. 

AND THEN, I happened to look down and spy....this COOL COOL COOL caterpillar! James spotted a second, then I saw a third. Back in the house, James looked through our caterpillar field guide and figured out that they're a white-lined sphinx moth species (Hyles lineata). We'd never seen a caterpillar like it before. Naturally, I told Peyton, our seventh-grade neighbor who LOVES caterpillars, about this species!

 

James agrees that it's better NOT to mow (except for a few walking paths) the Meadow. So much life has a place to live life when we don't!

Nature knows what it's doing

Yesterday evening, I was walking back from across the street, where I'd been watering our neighbors' potted plants. Like I sometimes do, I stopped and peered at plants in the adjacent vacant lot along the fence line. Maybe a little cenizo was coming up beneath the adult. It'd sure be cool to have one in our Wildscape. No luck, though. Darn it.
 

Then I looked at the cenizo leaves. A caterpillar! First, I thought it was a crimson patch larva (Chlosyne janais), which host on flame acanthus and other members of the acanthus family. I looked around other leaves but couldn't spot any more caterpillars. But what was a crimson patch doing on a cenizo? 

Back at my desk, I looked up cenizo (Leucophyllum frutescens) and found two species that it hosts: theona checkerspot (Chlosyne theona) and Calleta silkmoth (Eupackardia calleta). No, I concluded, my caterpillar wasn't either one of those. Perhaps a butterfly mama had made a mistake and laid her egg on the wrong host plant? Or maybe I'd observed a new species on the cenizo, one that hadn't been documented before?

HA! Dumb me!

Like Mother Nature would make a mistake? Hardly! I went back to looking at images of Chlosyne theona larvae and quickly realized that my caterpillar friend on the cenizo WAS indeed a Chlosyne theona.

But just now, I also realized that my initial theory of finding a crimson patch wasn't too far off. The two butterflies are in the same genus: Chlosyne.

Maybe I'm not so dumb after all.

Theona checkerspot larva (Chlosyne theona)

Wandering through the Meadow

Look what I spotted on the purple milkweed vine! A monarch caterpillar! But wait a minute...it can't be. Once I started looking a photos of Danaus plexippus caterpillars, I realized I was wrong. For one thing, this child has red tinges of color, which monarch caterpillars don't have. A little nosing around on the Internet, and I found the answer: it's a queen (Danaus gilippus)! 
Another clue: Monarch caerpillars have two sets of tubercles (those antenna-looking appendages) and queens have three. 
I guess it's been a LONG time since I've seen a queen caterpillar. Cool!

Texas bindweed (Convolvulus equitans)

Waiting for help from Jerry Stacy, a fellow Texas Master Naturalist, for the ID of this mystery plant. Aren't the tiny flowers sweet?
UPDATE–What a sleuth! Jerry figured out my mystery plants: Knotweed leaf-flower (Phyllanthus polygonoides). How'd you do that, I asked him. "A big book. Flora of North Central Texas," he wrote back. That IS a BIG book! I've seen it! Thanks, Jerry!

Carolina snailseed (Cocculus carolinus)

I've seen this plant for years and always ignored it. In my email, I asked Jerry if he could ID it, too. "Looks like prostrate euphorbia," he wrote. "Ground spurge." He's right! Euphorbia maculata is "a late-germinating, low growing, mat-producing summer annual," according to Michigan State University's Turf Weeds.net. Another mystery solved! Thanks, Jerry!