Looking through my pictures, I'm not sure I had a black swallowtail, but I did have a spicebush swallowtail!

I had a great day northeast of you. I saw a subset of what you saw BUT I had a GREAT find in my yard. Kids told me they had repeatedly seen a giant swallowtail. I got out my Ohio butterfly book and quizzed them to make sure whether they saw a giant or a tiger. They swore it was a giant. My daughter and I trotted over to look at my potted wafer ash. Nothing. Then we went out to look at the 6' tall wafer ash. My daughter found an egg. I went inside and checked my "The Life Cycles of Butterflies" book to confirm what a GST egg looked like (I've never seen one before). The egg matched the picture! Went back out to look for more. Found four, one of which had already been emptied by something.

My first GSTs ever! A very good day. Now I'm hoping my wafer ash has enough leaves to feed the cats.

KC

Congrats on the GST eggs! I'd love to find some GST eggs, I guess I'll have to look up wafer ash - I'm not sure I know what they look like.

Gosh Jeanne and KC, if you want giants we have more than we can handle at the butterfly house. I counted over 130 catepillars and close to 100 eggs on one poor Ptelea in our house. I don't know what we are going to do with them. We have some other things on the property but I don't know if it is enough.

We are having a good year, finally! Glad to hear you are seeing things too!

-Elisabeth

Ha ha...that's super awesome. And I was doing the happy dance yesterday when a Spicebush Swallowtail came to visit while I was weeding :)

Elisabeth, thank you for the offer but I'm not sure if I have any of the host plants ... I think I might have to plant a wafer ash this fall!

Lindacatherine, I do happy dances too - luckily it's just my husband that has to witness that and he's used to it!

If you have rue, you can use that.
-Elisabeth

I don't have any rue either darn it! I also didn't realize that the GST would use rue, I knew the BST would but I seem to do fine with BST and Queen Anne's Lace and they can eat all they want of the QAL :)

Congratulations on your excellent day in the butterfly garden. You have quite a listing of species!

We are having a banner year for butterflies in our garden here in Anderson Township (Cincinnati), too. Our list is about the same as yours, although it took me a few days (not just one) this week to get to that number.

We had a rare one called a 'goatweed leafwing' on Sunday. And a couple of Commas and a Question Mark several days ago, thanks to our overgrown hops vine, I think.

I looked back in my garden diary for last year's July 20th records and I barely had any BF visitors that day. It's interesting to compare from year to year.

I will be interested to keep track of what's going on in your gardens for the rest of the season.

Thanks for sharing. J.

Hi J.
It was exciting to see your post about the Goatweed leafwing! We are having a good year in Ohio. I guess the Goatweed Leafwings eat various Croton species and in Ohio that would be Croton monanthogynus (prairie tea) and Croton capitatus (hogweed), both of which are found in your county. You guys in the Cincinnati area have all the luck!
Cheers,
Elisabeth

Congrats on all your butterflies, Jeanne!
Goatweed leafwings are very interesting, Elisabeth. They use Croton capitatus here, and I've noticed it growing big roadside lately. I've raised some and planted goatweed in my garden just for raising them. Unfortunately, they're the most frustrating of butterflies to me, because they almost never open their wings while perching - when they do open them, it's only for like a nano second. Too bad, because they're a beautiful, bright shade of orange!
Sherry

Fairfieldcircle, congrats on the goatweed leafwings, what an exciting find! Just as with birds, until I started paying attention, I had no idea we had so many different kinds of butterflies here in Ohio. Probably not as many as Misssherry and some of the other southerners here but still enough to keep it interesting and fun.