What’s Flying? - September

Welcome to the wonderful month of September! This is probably my favorite month of the year, not just because it is the month that contains my birthday (and a yearly beach getaway) but also because the tail end of this month often brings us the first break from the unrelenting summers. Out in the gardens, we long for that at present.
With my favorite month comes a new blog feature: What’s flying? We’ll let you know what butterflies are out and about in the gardens here at MOSI and perhaps these are the same species you can sight in you own yard (for our central Florida readers).

What’s flying in the MOSI gardens?

• Gulf Fritillary
• Cloudless Sulphur
• Orange Barred Sulphur
• Sleepy Orange
• Spicebush Swallowtail
• Polydamas Swallowtail
• Pipevine Swallowtail
• Monarch
• Eastern Black Swallowtail
• Giant Swallowtail
• Duskywing
• Tropical Checker Spot
• Long Tailed Skipper
• Blues
• Fiery Skipper
• White Peacock
• Gray Hairstreak
• Southern Skipperling

Notes from the field:

• Gulf Fritillaries: This species is super abundant! There are scads of these butterflies out in the gardens right now, so many that it sometimes seems like they are swarming.
• Cloudless Sulphur: These are abundant. This is sulphur season and you can see these pale yellow butterflies laying eggs on nearly every species of cassia.
• Orange Barred Sulphur: These are abundant laying eggs on cassia and often taking nectar from Firebush.
• White Peacock: Sadly, we have only seen one or two of this species that is usually abundant on our site.
• Spicebush Swallowtail: Jill snapped this amazing photo of Spicebush Swallowtails mating, nestled inside a white duranta.
• It’s really hot outside. Ugh.