Your colors are gorgeous. That Gulf Fritillary is very pretty on the red zinnia. Hot colors for a hot month. I just saw a picture of spicebush swallowtail and the caption said you could tell it by the half moon shapes. I see half moon shapes on your black butterfly.

Christie, those are wonderful pics of the butterflies.

I agree, the black is a Spicebush. They have the neatest caterpillars with coloring to look like large eyes on their heads.

Yesterday I saw another Monarch and a Pipevine Swallowtail (I think). It was too hot to go out and try to get a picture.

I am going to lay out an overripe banana today and see what it draws.

Well, I put the banana out this morning and it drew several of some kind of orange butterfly, maybe a fritillary. They kept their wings closed while feeding. There are two on it right now.

I got a couple of sorry pictures this morning. {{gwi:519466}}From August 2010

We have lots of these black caterpillars climbing around the back door the largestd is about 1 inch. Does anyone know what they are?

Thanks - The red zinnias photograph well. A few of them were laying over and broken off after the little storm we had Saturday night. : ( My verbena bonariensis was almost horizontal but not broken off.

Glenda - I looked at images of black caterpillars. There are Leopard Moths and Tiger Moths that are black and spiny like that and kinda pretty. If you knew what to feed them, you could put a couple in a jar and see what they turn into. Someone in the Butterfly forum might be able to id them for you and tell you what to do with them if you want to raise some. Some moths crawl under leaves or down into the soil to pupate.

Is there a bowl of gravel underneath the fruit? I wonder why they do that.
The fruit doesn't look very appetizing but it's worth it to attract those Red Spotted Purples. Another pretty one that will go to rotten fruit, that I haven't seen this year is Viceroy. They look a lot like a Monarch.