Steph's Virtual Garden: Butterflies

Steph's Virtual Butterfly Garden:

Scroll through the butterflies I've found so far.
Click on a butterfly to chase it through our garden and discover....
Go look and see; there are all sorts of stories in this garden:

Julia Dryas

Zebra Heliconian
(Zebra Longwing)

Red-Banded Hairstreak

Mallow Scrub Hairstreak
Strymon istapa

Fulvous Hairstreak
Electrostrymon angelia

Polydamas Swallowtail

Palamedes Swallowtail

Great Southern White

Ceraunus Blue

Orange-Barred Sulphur

Variegated Fritillary

empty spots are just butterflies that haven't posed for me yet

Skipper Butterflies

Long Tailed Skipper
Urbanus proteus

Dorantes Longtail Skipper
Urbanus dorantes

Firey Skipper
Hylephila phyleus

Hammock Skipper
Polygonus leo

Monk Skipper
Asbolis capucinus

Tropical Checkered Skipper
Pyrgus oileus

Male Horace's Duskywing Skipper Butterfly

Male Horace's Duskywing Skipper, Erynnis horatius

Female Horace's Duskywing Skipper, Erynnis horatius

Three-spotted Skipper
Cymaenes tripunctus

Skipper?

Ambush Bug Eats Ocola Skipper, Panoquina ocola

There's a new discussion area on the site.

Feel free to hop on over and start a thread so we can all discuss our butterflies.

My site is designed to share what I've seen and learned about creating a successful butterfly garden in my yard down here in South East Florida (and to help me remember it all). My photos are from Palm Beach or Broward Counties unless otherwise noted. Since I wrote that, I've expanded a bit to plants, other critters, and more recently birds. I'm having a blast learning the local critters, so I'm sharing what I've photographed and learned about them too.

If you find errors or broken links, please email me so I can fix them. This is a growing project, and I'm happy for any help and suggestions you offer.

This page shows you the butterflies I've found so far. Click the image or butterfly name to visit my page on that butterfly. You'll see larger photographs of it, various stages of its life cycle such as it's egg, caterpillar, and chrysalis, and find out what plants it needs to reproduce (host plant) or use as a food source (nectar plant), as well as any other interesting things I've learned about it. I hope you enjoy browsing through my butterfly gardening experiences. As my garden grows, my site does too, so check back every so often to see what's new.

Host Plants are plants that butterflies lay eggs on. The eggs hatch into tiny caterpillars that generally eat for a couple of weeks before making a chrysalis (butterflies) or cocoon (moths.) Click on any image above to visit one of my pages about that butterfly to find the host plant(s) it uses, or visit my host plant page to browse through the thumbnail image gallery of the host plants I've seen eggs or caterpillars on. Click on any of the photos there to go to a page about that host plant.

Nectar Plants are flowering plants that butterflies use their proboscis to sip nectar from. Zebra Heliconian butterflies also eat pollen from the flowers. Some flowers get used more than others, or by more butterflies than others. Some butterflies prefer specific flowers. Each individual butterfly page mentions the flowers I've seen that butterfly use; just click any of the pictures above to go to my page about that butterfly. My nectar plant page has a thumbnail picture gallery of flowers and nectar plants that you can browse through. Click on any of the photos there to go to a page about that flowering plant.

Each page on the site has the same menu at the bottom so you can easily get back to the main thumbnail image gallery pages.

Alternate Endings

Most caterpillars do not become butterflies; they end up as food for some other creature. Visit out my Other Creatures page to see some of the bugs that prey on or parasitize butterflies and moths and their larvae (caterpillars) or eggs. You'll also find pages on other bugs and creatures I've found in my butterfly garden and in South Florida.

To link to this page on your web site, copy this text
<a href="http://butterflies.heuristron.net">Butterflies</a>
to your web page. It will look like this: Butterflies