Butterfly Visitors!

 We've had lots and lots of butterflies

this summer. Right now it seems

that we have a lot of 

swallowtails!

So - I thought I'd take a moment to

point out the difference between the

Spicebush Swallowtail above and

the Black Swallowtail, below.

These two are often confused and even

I have a hard time telling which is

which. But - look at the fore-wings!

The Spicebush Swallowtail

has one row of spots and the

Black Swallowtail has more!

There is a third variety that looks

a lot like these two.

The Tiger Swallowtail.

He looks like the Spicebush and has one

row of spots, but he will have

a red dot on each of his hind wings. 

Other visitors this week were:

 The Monarch!

 Another Spicebush Swallowtail!

 Giant Swallowtails!

 Another Giant Swallowtail!

 And another Black Swallowtail!

The girls and I love watching the butterflies 

and humming birds and learning 

what we can about them!

The Butterfly Garden

Our little butterfly garden has not been

as pretty this year as it has in years past.

The weather has been a little weird

I think that has some of the

flowers confused. They're not sure

if it is spring, summer or fall,

and so they're not quite sure

what to do.

We have had a good crop

of butterflies, though!

I've counted as many as 12

species in a day!

 This Gulf Fritillary is new to the

garden this year. I love his shiny

silvery patches on his wings.

He's really beautiful!

 The Buckeyes have been plentiful!

There are four or five in the garden

almost every single day.

 These little crescents are common, too.

We see them all the time and they

seem to run in little flocks.

There are four on the coneflower above.

Can you see them?

And another crescent. This guy is lucky

to have found a flower to perch on.

See those green leaves in

the background?

That's a watermelon plant!

Grace spit seeds into the garden

last summer and now her

watermelon have taken over.

It's choking out the flowers so the

butterflies might have a little less

to eat, but it'll be feeding us, soon!

The watermelon are almost ripe!



Our Little Butterfly Garden

Our little butterfly garden has had lots

of visitors. These painted ladies probably

frequent it the most!

 We get an occasional Giant Swallowtail!

 And an occasional Zebra Swallowtail!

 The Giant Swallowtail

seems to like posing for pictures!

Where you find butterflies, you

often find little moths.

See him sucking the nector out

of our butterfly bush bloom?

 And this year, we have gotten a few

Monarchs! They are one of my

favorites, but since their caterpillers feed

on milweed, and I normally weed my

blower beds, we didn't get an

abundant supply.

This year, however - I left any milkweed growing

in and under my butterfly bush.The bush keeps

them sort of camoflaged, so I don't

have to look at them and

feel like my garden needs weeding.

And the catipillars have them

to feed upon. Hopefully, this plan

will make Monarch visits

more frequent!





They are so pretty and they flutter

so gracefully through the yard.

I'd love to have a few more!

Butterflies

 Our little butterfly garden is growing nicely and we

have had lots of visitors!

We get a lot of these - Red Admirals!

(and yeah, I can plainly see that they are orange, but that is their technical name)

 We also get quite a few of these

Great Spangled Fritillary Butterflies!

 And we get a lot of

West Coast Ladies!

(Grace has not asked about the West Coast Men)

West Coast Ladies look like Painted Ladies!

The only real difference is the dots on the hind wings.

In a Painted Lady they are white and in a

West Coast Lady they are blue!

And another Red Admiral!

Grace really enjoyed chasing this butterfly.

We chased it all around the yard and the whole

time she was talking to it.

She'd say... "It's okay! I just want to be your friend!"

"I won't hurt you!"

"Come on sweetie.... I just want to look! I won't touch your

pretty wings!"

"Who painted your wings? They're so pretty!"

It was so cute!