{"id":581,"date":"2011-06-07T12:40:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T12:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/06\/black-swallowtail-butterflies.html"},"modified":"2011-06-07T12:40:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-07T12:40:00","slug":"black-swallowtail-butterflies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/06\/black-swallowtail-butterflies\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Swallowtail Butterflies!"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 30th I saw a black swallowtail butterfly flitting around my herb garden.  A familiar sight, we’d seen many of them when we lived on the east coast of Florida<\/a>, North Carolina, Nebraska<\/a> and now again we’re greeted.<\/p>\n

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I knew what she was doing — laying eggs!  The next day I scoured the herbs for evidence of eggs, but I couldn’t find any.  Apparently I wasn’t looking hard enough.<\/p>\n

Today, 7 days later, my dill and parsley are covered in the telltale bird-poop-looking caterpillars!  I counted at least 8 of them out there chowing down.  I don’t think they’ll last very long…I saw some caterpillars a few weeks ago and I’m guessing bluebirds got to them.  While they start out looking like bird poop to deceive predators, but at a certain point they molt out of the poop-skin and end up with more bold stripes.  This is usually when a bird or larger bug will swoop down and get them.<\/p>\n

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On May 30th I saw a black swallowtail butterfly flitting around my herb garden.  A familiar sight, we’d seen many of them when we lived on the east coast of Florida, North Carolina, Nebraska and now again we’re greeted. I knew what she was doing — laying eggs!  The next day I scoured the herbs … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[41,620],"class_list":["post-581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-butterflies","tag-gardening"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t