The invasion of the Mourning Cloak!
While working in the yard this afternoon re-doing my compost (what a mess, the zip ties were broken and the screening was separating and the whole thing was about to fall over the retaining wall, but I digress) I was digging out the nasty grubs (which I feed to the crows) and I noticed a caterpillar, I picked him up to get him to a safer place and looked at the wall behind me and the darn thing was covered with caterpillars! All over the house and the garage, all slowly making their way up to the eaves.
These are Mourning Cloaks -these little bugger will stay together from the time they hatch until it is time to walk and find a place to mount itself to create its chrysalis and enter into their pupal stage. They have a huge appetite and if they finish off all the leaves they will all together find a new food source. They must have been in the Chinese Elm trees we have.
It should be anywhere from 10 to 15 days and we will have butterflies! I will share pics of them when it happens
I have never seen a mourning cloak caterpillar or butterfly. Your photos of the caterpillars made my day but I will be much happier when I see the butterflies. : )
well, we will have to wait for about 10 to 15 days depending on the temperatures. We will have a warm weekend (around 80 deg F) but temps are supposed to drop again on Monday. As soon as they start making their chrysalis, I will post more pics. They are just now mounting themselves to everything - window sills, eaves, the patio cover. Even more were emerging today. I can not tell you how excited I am to see them turn into butterflies. Just the mass number of them should be absolutely incredible.
The mourning cloak are very beautiful - a dark brown almost black with a tan trim and blue spots. This is the first year this has happened here so I am delighted. I was helping them today to get higher on the walls faster so they did not get picked off by all the birds (No one worry - the birds are very well fed without eating these little critters!)
While waiting for the butterflies, I am excited to see your photos of their chrysalis. You are so lucky. I hope it gets warm again there soon and stays warm. : )
here I made a new post because I discovered something I never knew about caterpillars!
https://steemit.com/butterfly/@four20/metamorphosis-of-a-mourning-cloak