This year has been such a sad Butterfly/Caterpillar year. We have decided its due to a light winter rain and lack of wild plant growth. Also one of the plants is not native and the city kills what they can. But a few weeks ago while cruising Home Depot I thought I would peek at the citrus trees for some eggs and what do you know!
I found six baby Giant Swallowtail eggs on the citrus trees and they all hatched on the same day within minutes of each other, and that has never happened. I took this pic with my phone on macro and you can see the little pillars on the edges of the leaves and one on the paper towel. One of the babies is eating the egg that he just hatched from, they do that often. I'm going to track their growth to butterfly and you will see how amazing they are.
I have lost two babies, one to drowning in the water that I put the citrus leaves in. Sometimes I lose a few and it is sad, but in the wild it takes about 100 eggs to produce one flying butterfly. I figure my success rate is about %90 percent, and that is a awesome contribution to mother nature.
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