Yay for you! I hope to have some Giants again this year - I have 3' tall rue plants and a new hop "tree". The quotes are because it is about 8" tall with maybe 9 leaves :)

Congrats! I'm still waiting. I've been checking my rue and prickly ash almost every day, but nothing so far and I haven't had any Giant Swallowtail sightings yet. I have a few Wafer Ash trees(shrubs?) in containers that I started from seeds this spring. I've been checking those also.

I have a few Meyer Lemons that I started from seeds also. They're three or four inches tall and in little pots outside on my patio. It wouldn't take a Giant Swallowtail cat very long to eat those. I need to watch and move the cats if they show up.

Good luck with your babies - both the GSTs and the cardinals. The mama cardinal may fly off when you get close but I'm sure she'll be back soon. We've had a cardinal nest more than once in a Japanese Maple that's right by our front porch. Once in a nest that was in perfect sight from the window. We could see down into it from only a few feet away.

Congrats, Miss Sherry! I know that you've been waiting for the GSTs and your patience has been rewarded. They're not plentiful up here either and if I get any eggs, I'll be sure to collect them all and raise them in containers. They're not hard to raise. I haven't seen any of the butterflies yet this year but hope to in the next couple of months.

Yesterday when I was outside gathering dill for my one BST, I saw one of those darn red and black wasps patrolling the plants, so I was especially glad that I brought in the tiny cat that I found last week. I probably should look over the rue too to see if I can find any on there. Right now they're loaded with blooms that I'll have to cut off or I'll have rue plants coming up all over the place later on. I always leave some though because that's where I seem to almost always find the GST eggs, on the seed heads.

Best of luck with your GSTs, and I wouldn't worry about the cardinal abandoning her nest just from your being there gathering the GST eggs for awhile.

Cathy

Thanks, weed30, Christie and Cathy! I went back to the garden and there were more eggs, this time on the other, bigger wafer ash/hop tree/Ptelea trifoliata, I can never figure out what to call them! :) So she came back while I cooled off in the house. I'm cleaning cages right now, because guess what?

You know I haven't gotten any gulf frits yet? Well, I saw a female gulf frit laying an egg on one of the passionvines in my garden! I also found some hatchling gulf frit cats, so the gulf frit that I saw passing through about a week - 10 days or so ago probably left me these babies - 'may be the same butterfly. The only problem here is that the hatchlings are eating the flower buds on a passionvine that came from a seed that I planted from fruit from one of my 'Incense' passies. 'Incense' doesn't make pollen, so any seedlings that come from it have as their male parent a passionflower that makes pollen, which, in this case would be either regular P. incarnata or P. incarnata 'alba' a white form of the native maypops. These vines grow next to the 'Incense' in my front yard beds, and bees go back and forth between their flowers all the time. There's always a chance the flowers could be something different or special, probably not, but there's a chance. Oh well, it'll keep making more flowers, that's for sure, because this is one vigorous vine! I imagine the leaves must be more like P. incarnata, since the gulf frits almost never lay eggs on the 'Incense' - that's good! I've got another passionvine P. mooreana growing by 'Incense' and maypops, so I'm hoping for a hybrid from it, too.

Anyway, Memorial Day has been a very memorable butterfly day here!

Sherry

I've found more eggs, I've brought them in to raise, and the first one has already hatched! It's only been four days since I saw the female laying her eggs, so this hatchling must have come from one of the eggs that I found on the underneath side of a wafer ash that I didn't see on May 28th. Either that or they're hatching quicker these days than they used to - 'used to take at least five days, sometimes a week.

I've also continued to find more little gulf frit cats, and I'm bringing them in to raise also. These gulf frits and giant swallowtails will, hopefully, provide the foundation for a lot of adults in the garden later on, who'll mate and increase the numbers.

Sherry

My first giant swallowtail caterpillar is pupating now. I got a picture of it or maybe another one of the big ones.
Last instar GST cats alway remind me of pictures I remember seeing years ago of a monkey with what looked like a chauffeur's cap on - maybe it was an organ grinder's monkey -

{{gwi:472602}}

Sherry