Butterfly Season Begins

I was sitting in the sun yesterday afternoon in my garden and saw this beautiful Giant Swallowtail butterfly floating around all my plants. 

 It floated lazily in circles, around the yard, out in the alley, back in the yard, circling, circling.  It was huge.

Finally it found what it was looking for:  my Rue plants.  I had planted them last year specifically for the Giant Swallowtail -- it is their main host plant.

She bounced around on the two plants and finally came to rest and laid a few eggs:

And then floated lazily in circles all over the yard again...

Here are two posts from last year about the swallowtail and Rue.  I wrote about them in June -- they are really early this year!

http://my1929tudor.blogspot.com/2011/06/more-on-rue.html


http://my1929tudor.blogspot.com/2011/06/rue-and-giant-swallowtail.html

More on Rue...

You are probably weary of reading about the giant swallowtail caterpillars on my rue, but --!!  It's shocking to me how many there are, and how fast they are growing, and, well.... how unattractive they are.  That's terrible to say, isn't it?  I'm just gonna say -- they look like bird poop to me!  They do turn into beautiful butterflies, though.

I'm also still just sort of amazed at how true to form it is that this plant is a host for the swallowtail.  I seriously didn't have it in my yard more than a couple of days and there were eggs on it.  Just sort of blows my mind.

How many can you see?  I counted 8.

Rue and the Giant Swallowtail

I watched a Giant Swallowtail butterfly moving intermittently from leaf to leaf last week on my two Rue plants.  Now I see that she was laying eggs.  Here are a couple of photos that I took this weekend when I planted the rue plants into the ground along my walkway:

Here's what the caterpillars will look like...

Poor little guy, not the most attractive... but great camo, right??

And, finally, the butterfly:



I expect to see a lot of these -- I hope I am right.