This week in the garden - #72

 Rain!!! 

Yes, we finally got some measurable rain this week. The picture of the rain gauge was taken on Wednesday and shows 0.75 inch of rain, but earlier in the week, on two occasions, we got 0.50 and 0.125 inch of rain. So, if my math is correct, that means more than one inch of rain, actually 1.375 for the week. So far. There is still considerable moisture in the air and a possibility of more rain over the next few days, and while we certainly appreciate what we have gotten, more would be welcome.

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Speaking of the weather, I've been a bit under it this week with a respiratory infection and accompanying fever, so I've spent the week mostly indoors.

But yesterday, I was feeling better and I did manage to get outside and I even had a camera in my hand when I saw this.

 A Spicebush Swallowtail butterfly! The first one of its kind that I had seen in the garden since...I can't remember when. In fact, it was the first swallowtail of any kind that I had seen in the garden in many weeks. I was so excited that I followed him around as he was sipping from the flame acanthus blossoms, snapping pictures as I went.

As always, there were lots of bees in the acanthus hedge and some of them took exception to sharing their bounty with an interloper.

But there were actually plenty of blossoms for everyone.

This butterfly seemed to be in pristine condition which leads me to believe that it had not been out of the chrysalis for long. They usually begin to show wear and tear on the wings within a few days of emerging.

As I've noted in other recent posts here, the butterfly traffic in the garden does seem to increasing slowly. I don't know if we'll ever get back to our usual summer numbers this year, but it is heartening to be seeing more of them and more varieties of them around my yard.

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Although butterfly numbers have been down, there have been plenty of dragonflies around the garden recently. This one that I photographed by my goldfish pond last week is (I think) a Blue Dasher, but I'm no expert on dragonfly identification and I could be wrong. Whatever its true identity, I enjoy these critters almost as much as the butterflies and I love having them in my garden.

Clever little caterpillar!

I've been documenting the development of Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillars on my recently planted spicebush. It only took the butterflies a few short days to find it and begin laying eggs on it.

Here was one of several tiny eggs that I found on the bush after watching a female swallowtail visiting it.

A few days later, I discovered that the eggs had hatched and I found seven of these little guys on various leaves. They bore a striking resemblance to bird poop and each was motionless on its leaf, obviously an adaptation to protect the newly-hatched caterpillars from the notice of predators.

Today when I stopped by to check on the caterpillars, I immediately noticed that several of the leaves had been nibbled and folded over. Examining the folded leaf, I found it was stitched together with a kind of silk and that there was a tiny Spicebush caterpillar inside the pocket that was formed.

Back inside, I pulled my John and Gloria Tveten field guide, Butterflies of Houston and Southeast Texas, from the shelf to read about the Spicebush Swallowtail. The Tvetens had written, "The larvae feed primarily at night, hiding during the day within a rolled leaf stitched with silk." So my caterpillars were performing exactly as Spicebush Swallowtails are known to perform. I had just never seen it because I've never had Spicebush caterpillars before.

Caterpillars are easy prey for hungry wasps and other predators and so they have to develop defensive measures to protect themselves. The rolled leaf is one of the most effective and it is used by several types of caterpillars, most notoriously the "leaf-rollers" that make a mess of our canna leaves during summer. Pretending to be a bird dropping is another defense. The clever little Spicebush caterpillars use both of these strategies and no doubt increase their survival rate accordingly.