Ten Little Celebrations – July 2025

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July was a great month to be outdoors – even though it was very hot…plenty to celebrate.

Rescuing a large cecropia caterpillar from the trash. One of my morning shifts at the Butterfly House started with quite a surprise….finding a cecropia caterpillar in the trash while I was cleaning up before opening. I celebrated that I happened to look down before I threw in the messy paper towel…and could easily return the caterpillar to the table display.

Luna caterpillars making cocoons. I celebrated when my 40 or so Luna Moth caterpillars started making their cocoons. When they were all large caterpillars, it was challenging to keep them sufficiently supplied with sweet gum leaves.

More and more cocoons…and then I took the last 4 Luna caterpillars to the Butterfly House. I celebrated some quite days with only rustlings from the pupa inside the cocoons.

The first Luna Moths emerging. The first moths started to emerge…3 males in one day! I celebrated that so many of the cocoons seem viable too…so many more of these beautiful moths will be emerging soon.

A late afternoon barbeque picnic and evening mothing. I celebrated with a great meal with fellow Butterfly House docents…and then seeing how lights and sheets in the evening attract moths.

Dayl ilies at the Botanical. I celebrate the profusion of color and form of the day lilies every year about this time.

Finding S. Fred Prince’s The rainbow in the grass; wildflowers of the Marvel Cave Ozark. I was doing my usual look at botanical books for next month and happened upon this beautiful one from the early 1900s about the wildflowers in the Branson MO area….close to where I live!

Seeing cattle egrets. As I drove north from Dallas, I saw a flock of cattle egrets flying over the highway. It must be a good year for producing young.

Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden. My husband and I always enjoy the plantings around the building…and the walk down toward the field of wildflowers. We went early enough in the day that it wasn’t too hot.

Sunflowers at the assisted living home. My sister planted sunflowers in a big pot (and some of the seeds must have spilled because several plants are growing in the soil next to the pot). I celebrated that they are thriving and the memory that my niece brought a sunflower seedling in a cup home from kindergarten, and my mother propagated them along the alley for years. That niece is getting ready to have her second child soon.

Roston Native Butterfly House – July 2025

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My shifts at the Roston Native Butterfly House were hotter in July – even though all of them were for the 10-12:30 shift. The high points of the month involved caterpillars.

Two that were new-to-me were the caterpillars for the red spotted purple butterfly (on willow) and the Atala butterfly (on cycad).

At the beginning of one of my shifts, I was cleaning the caterpillar frass from the very wet display table and got a big surprise when I flipped the lid on the trash to throw away a messy paper towel and discovered a very large cecropia moth caterpillar on some black cherry leaves that just happened to be in the trash. I quickly scooped the leaves and caterpillar up and put them back with the other cecropia caterpillars…..and the caterpillar began wondering around the table. My assumption is that sometime during the night it wandered off the table and fell into the trash. We eventually put it in the zippered cage so that its walkabout could be somewhat contained! It was probably large enough to be ready to make its cocoon.

I enjoy photographing things in the butterfly house whenever there are few or no visitors there! The cecropia caterpillars in the house toward the end of the month were ones that were raised with my luna caterpillars on sweet gum, and they rejected a shift to black cherry leaves when they got to the butterfly house….so now the sweet gum vase has a mix of luna and cecropia caterpillars.

Adventures in Caterpillar Care (5)

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Continuing my caterpillar care experience…

I never underestimated the amount of sweet gum leaves for the luna caterpillars again…but it got easier as the week progressed because more of the caterpillars were making cocoons so not as many leaves were required. The bin is very messy when a lot of caterpillars are beginning to make their cocoons since they expel waste and water before they begin the process. The paper towels in the bottom of the bin made clean up easier but it had to be done at least once a day. The cecropia caterpillars were finally all past instar 1.

Some of the luna cocoons were attached to the racks I had used to support the leaves, so they are in my first group of cocoons – inside a mesh cage that will contain the luna moths when they emerge.

By the end of the week the luna cocoon production was waning. I purchased 2 more mesh cages and gave 5 cocoons to my daughter with one of them. The other cage and 3 cocoons went to the family that owns the sweet gum tree that provided a lot of the food for the caterpillars.

Finally – I had 4 remaining luna moth caterpillars (all instar 5) and 3 cecropia caterpillars (1 instar 2 and 2 instar 3). It took them to the Butterfly House to use on the caterpillar display table.

I have the mesh cage and 3 bins (each with cocoons that were made at roughly the same time). There are about 35 cocoons. Most of the caterpillars I had at the beginning made it to the cocoon stage – very different than would happen in the wild with birds and other predators around. The moths should emerge in 2-3 weeks…lots of luna moths. I will take some of them to the Butterfly House and release others near sweet gum trees…hoping to feed a few young birds and maybe establish a luna moth population too.

The luna cocoons emit sounds periodically…giving me confidence that the pupa inside is viable and developing. I am looking forward to the opportunity to see so many of them emerge! 

Previous Adventures in Caterpillar Care posts

Adventures in Caterpillar Care (4)

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July 2 – July 9 with a lot of bigger and bigger luna moth caterpillars and a few cecropia moth caterpillars… an ongoing adventure.

I graduated to two large bins for the 40 or so luna moth caterpillars on 7/2 because the caterpillars seemed too crowded in one.

I moved the cecropia moth caterpillars to are larger bin too. They were still small but were beginning to look colorful…growing well on the sweet gum leaves.

I appreciated my neighbor with the sweet gum tree even more as the caterpillars got bigger. I made almost daily trips to get a bag of leaves! Pretty soon I graduated from my long-handled pruners to a pole saw because all the leaves were higher in the tree. The cecropias were eating well (I could find them more easily once they were in their own bin) and were still small enough to keep up with their food requirements.

One morning I thought I heard noises coming from one of the big luna bins. I made a movie to capture the sound of caterpillars eating (not loud….but I was pleased to capture the sound of caterpillars munching)!

The same day that I heard munching, I started to see some cocoons and noticing how big many of luna moth caterpillars had become.

The next morning I saw one that had changed color…as they sometimes do before building their cocoon.

I thought I left plenty of leaves in the bins for overnight….but when I came downstairs the next morning there was not a leaf left in either bin. It was a caterpillar emergency. I texted my neighbor and cleaned out the bins (put cocoons in a separate bin) and then went to get leaves. Fortunately, most caterpillars survived.

As I was cleaning out the bins, I found another caterpillar that had changed colors and put it in a small bin with violet leaves, and it immediately made a cocoon!

After the caterpillar emergency was dealt with, I had a shift in the Butterfly House. I took two larger caterpillars for the caterpillar display table and 4 cocoons for the display case. The cocoons contrasted nicely with the older cocoons already in the case because the leaf part was still green!

I got a collapsible case to put my other cocoons in so I can watch them emerge….and hopefully share the experience with the family that provided the leaves for the caterpillars.

The cecropia caterpillars will probably go to the Butterfly House at some point and maybe some of the luna moths when they emerge.

It’s been an exciting week…probably the peak sweet gum consumption of this adventure.

Previous Adventures in Caterpillar Care posts

Roston Native Butterfly House – June 2025

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Of course there are butterflies in the Roston Native Butterfly House…

But this post is focused more on caterpillars. The cecropia moth

Has very large caterpillars which are the stars of the caterpillar table!

The luna moths (male with feathery antennae and the female with more thread like antennae)

Also have large caterpillars but they are not quite as large or colorful.

The tiger swallowtail caterpillars have fake eye spots. They are often on the tulip poplar tree in the butterfly house…at eye level with many adult visitors. We sometimes move a caterpillar on the table so that the children can see it more easily.

Learning about caterpillars – and their importance in the environment as food for other creatures (particularly young birds) - is part of the butterfly house experience.

Adventures in Caterpillar Care (3)

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This post is about my adventures in caterpillar care from June 25 to July 1.

The cecropia moth caterpillars (4 of them) were moved to their own bin. They are slower developing than the luna moth caterpillars and started out still having lots of block bristles but had progressed to more colorful instars a few days later. They are still quite small.

My daughter sent me a picture of a ‘wild’ cecropia moth caterpillar on elderberry. Mine are eating sweet gum.  

There are 40+ luna moth caterpillars. They are bigger and go through sweet gum leaves faster. I replenish leaves twice a day in the big bin.

The big bin with a cooling rack to support the leaves works well. I take out the denuded twigs and put in new – using the rack to support the leaves well above the frass level. With 40 caterpillars – a lot of frass accumulates in just 24 hours!

To refresh the bin, I put a layer of paper towel in the bottom of a fresh bin, then move the cooling rack from the old bin to the new. There are always 3 or 4 caterpillars among the frass; if they will crawl onto a leaf, I use that to move them but otherwise, I cut the paper towel around the caterpillar and move it on the paper towel.

With the caterpillars eating so much more, I got some leaves from another sweet gum and also went to the Botanical Garden after a storm and found a branch that had be ripped off a sweet gum….lots of caterpillar food! I am saving the neighborhood tree for when I need a quick food source for the caterpillars. Sweet gum has the advantage of staying fresh for days in a closed bin….although it doesn’t last that long if there are 40 caterpillars in the bin!

Adventures in Caterpillar Care (2)

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My husband handled the feedings while I was in Dallas and Wichita Falls for 3 days; I left him plenty of sweet gum leaves (in the bin and in a vase to be added as needed). He managed although at one point they seemed so hungry that he thought they would run out food. The caterpillars were noticeably bigger with I returned home! I went to get fresh food the next morning…and that is when I started making some changes.

I opted to move the caterpillars to a slightly larger bin with a ruler added to hold the leaves above the coffee filters (and frass that accumulates very quickly). The fresh leaves that the old container held did not last 24 hours! I counted 40+ luna moth caterpillars and at least 3 cecropia moth caterpillars as I moved them on leaves to their new bin. It turned out that the larger bin was not big enough either since the leaves were almost all gone in 24 hours. The bigger caterpillars eat more than the newly hatched ones.

As they passed their 2-week-old mark, I moved the luna moth caterpillars to a large been with a cookie cooling rack to keep the leaves off the bottom. I have a paper towel layer there rather than coffee filters. Sometimes I can stick the twig through the metal grid so that the leaves stand up for easy caterpillar access. When I moved the luna mother caterpillars to the big bin, I counted 50 before I got sidetracked and lost the count! I’ll try to count each time I move them to a clean bin (probably every other day); they like to be under leaves so it is impossible to see most of them just looking down into the bin.

The luna moth caterpillars are now mostly green – which also makes them harder to see! How many do you see in the two pictures below?

When I moved the luna moth caterpillars to the big bin, I gave the cecropia moth caterpillars their own. There are 4 of them. They don’t grow as fast as the luna moths; they seem to like the sweet gum leaves (I tried maple leaves since some references list them as a popular food plant, but these caterpillars were already imprinted on sweet gum so they will continue to get it. The cecropia caterpillars are in the bin that I only used once for the whole group. It should work very well for them until they get very large.

Stay tuned for next week’s post about the continuing adventure.

Adventures in Caterpillar Care (1)

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On the Saturday of the Butterfly Festival at the Springfield Botanical Garden, I got a small bin of caterpillars: mostly luna moth…but a few cecropia in their too. The were tiny. The luna caterpillars had white tuffs of bristles and black stripes. The cecropia were all black and were a little bigger. They had hatched the Tuesday before. There were some sweet gum trees in the garden, so I left after adding a few fresh leaves to the bin.

I had found a sweet gum tree in my neighborhood and the family that owned it had agreed to provide leaves. The caterpillars needed more leaves the day after I got them (even though they were very small there were a lot of them and they were hungry)! I put the bin in my daughter’s old wagon (over 30 years old) and took the caterpillars with me to introduce them to the family with their favorite food tree. We moved them to a new bin with additional fresh leaves that the children of the family retrieved by climbing the sweet gum! The caterpillars began to move off the older leaves to the new ones almost immediately.

A few days later, the caterpillars were noticeably bigger. The luna caterpillars looked greener, less bristles. The cecropia caterpillars were still black. I was glad I had some extra leaves in water ready to feed them. I had gotten better at moving them to a clean bin (coffee filters in the bottom…leaves leaned again the sides to make them easier for the caterpillars to eat).

Stay tuned as the adventure continues in the coming weeks…

Brookside Wings of Fancy Caterpillars – August 2018

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The caterpillars at Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy exhibit are maturing….getting ready for cooler temperatures. On the walk up the ticket taker table, the last of the milkweed tussock moth caterpillars are finishing their leaves and pupating. A large number had to be moved to milkweed plants further from the caterpillar house so that the Monarch caterpillars would be on view to the visitors waiting to enter the caterpillar house of the exhibit.

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The caterpillar house in August featured a white case (for the saddleback caterpillars) and then places for 3 pots (starring cecropia moth and monarch butterfly caterpillars).

The saddleback caterpillars grew bigger in August. I talked to at least two people that has been stung by them in their gardens!

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The cecropia moth caterpillars made cocoons one my one over the course of the month. Yesterday there was only one caterpillar left on the black cherry – and it had been the runt of the caterpillars from the beginning; it’s catching up now.

There is a spicebush tree in a pot next to the black cherry where the caterpillars have moved to make their cocoons.

The monarch caterpillars have been the most fun to watch. I was in the caterpillar house once just after a caterpillar shed its skin.

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They alternate between resting and eating….mostly eating.

When they are big enough to pupate, they try to leave the host plant. One started the walk-about when I was volunteering in the caterpillar house (round and round the pot looking for a way off) and we moved it to a portable mesh cube where it made its J and then chrysalis.

Outside there were many Monarch chrysalises on the plants and the structure of the caterpillar house. They always look like jade pendants to me.

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