Butterflies and Caterpillars and Bees...Oh My!

Since I planted flowers in my garden this summer, I've witness a number of bugs enjoying them. The first I saw were bees, and there have been a LOT of bees - incidentally I'm ok with this as bee habitats have been diminishing as well as butterfly habitats - they seem to really like the bee balm and blanket flowers.

 Though I haven't seen many butterflies, the caterpillars really loved the dill - it took one day for a single caterpillar to devour the whole plant - and then they moved on to the parsley. I found five on the plant at one time (Black Swallowtails, Papilio polyxenes) :

I should note that, though it appears that there are two different kinds of caterpillars on this plant, they are actually all black swallowtails. The black ones with yellow spots are younger. They shed their skin to make more room for feeding. The green with black spots are the fully grown caterpillars that turn into a chrysalis. The next day, the three remaining caterpillars were quite fat and my parsley was reduced to nubs (I was hoping they'd make their cocoons nearby, but I didn't find them):

 A few days later I found two of these monarch caterpillars on the milkweed:

 Finally a butterfly - a Common Buckeye, or Junonia coenia

 And just a few days ago, a little further away, on one of my irises that failed to bloom this spring, is a cocoon! It's taking everything in me to keep from bringing it inside to see what kind of butterfly emerges - possibly a monarch? Since you can see a bit of the wings through the chrysalis, I'm guessing it won't be long now.

I've thought about next summer keeping some parsley in a pot and then constructing some sort of cage that I could bring inside, so if I end up with more swallowtail caterpillars, I can bring them inside to watch the whole process. I've found a few sites that talk about using an old fish tank or something, but I was hoping for something less heavy honestly. If you know of anything - plans or already constructed sanctuaries - I'd love to hear from you! Or if you've done this and had success, I'd love to hear about that too!!

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

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