Observation of the week – July 27 to August 2
How many of you can say that you combine butterfly watching with exercise? This week’s OOTW, a Black Swallowtail, was seen by Deb (aka @hockeydoc13) while doing biceps curls in her backyard. We were even more impressed to learn that Deb very diligently finished her set before grabbing her phone to take pictures of the butterfly!
The Black Swallowtail was easy for Deb to identify using her ROM Butterflies of Ontario field guide, especially since it seemed very interested in her veggie garden. Deb says: “It stated in the book that Black Swallowtails like carrot family plants, so it made perfect sense why it kept returning to the carrot plants in my garden.” In fact, in the second picture of Deb’s observation, you can see the butterfly is laying eggs on the carrots – so there may be little caterpillars there sometime soon!
Black Swallowtails are often seen in backyard gardens like Deb’s, where their caterpillar foodplants are growing. They can even sometimes be considered pests by people who would rather keep their parsley, dill, fennel, and carrots to themselves.
Interestingly, these cultivated hostplants are all non-native species that Black Swallowtails have adapted to use. Before the widespread establishment of these and other non-native plants in the same family (e.g. Queen Anne’s Lace), Black Swallowtails were probably much less common than they are now. They also would have most often been found in wetland areas instead of the old fields and gardens where they are now found commonly.
If you find Black Swallowtail caterpillars eating your veggies and don’t want to share, you could consider moving them to a patch a Queen Anne’s Lace or buying them some parsley to eat – be sure to rinse the leaves well to remove any pesticides.
Deb noticed something else about the butterfly that also caused us to choose it as the OOTW: “I was impressed at how well it was still able to fly with a big portion of the hindwing missing.”
That missing bit of wing is the sign of a bird that got unlucky. You often see Black Swallowtails (especially females, like this one) with signs of bird strikes on that part of their wings. Like the hairstreaks that we discussed in OOTW#7, this is probably because the eyespots there confuse birds into thinking that they are attacking the head.
The next time you’re outside getting some exercise, keep your eyes open for butterflies. And let us know what you see!
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