Anney, Although butterflies are very pretty, you really don't want to go too deeply into their feeding habits! They like decayed matter, among other things. Perhaps the moisture/partly decayed vegetable matter attracted them. The mineral or nutrient content of your compost is probably a butterfly banquet! The pretty little orange and black butterflies could be Queens or Hackberry or Admirals. They all look slightly like Monarchs, with the difference being the size (Monarchs are larger) and the arrangement of stripes, dots and margins.

hidesert_windy - FWIW, the V.cardui "blew" through southern Nevada a month ago. And there was not very many of them down here, in fact so light that they were almost missed. Normal years the move north is usually at least heavy enough that even a person not interested in leps will notice them. Not this year. With all the crazy cold/hot/cold and very windy weather we've had this year I'd bet a lot of the early leps have their schedules out of whack. So I don't know if that was the migration or not. If so many individuals were probably killed by the freak cold fronts and storms. What you saw could have blown into your area, could have been over wintered pupa that emerged someplace near your area or even over wintered adults right from your area. Of interest maybe... the migrations appear to be cyclic and heavier than normal every few years. But since I started seriously studying leps in 1964, the heaviest spring migration of V. cardui I have ever seen was in about 1989-90-91 while living in northern Utah. Can't remember for sure which year and my logs are all packed in storage. But it was so heavy that the cardui literally covered any surface they could hang onto wing tip to wing tip, with more hovering and trying to find a place to land. The ground, all plants, buildings... everything moved with them. It wasn't localized either. I drove out onto the west desert all the way to the Nevada border on back roads to photograph them that weekend, and never found a place they were not just as thick. You couldn't even get out of your vehicle without stepping on them. The following week I left Utah on a business trip that took me to Boise, then Twin Falls, Sun Valley and Idaho Falls before making a loop through western Montana from Butte to Missoula, Kalispell, Great Falls and back down to Bozeman, then to Jackson Wyoming before returning home. They were just as thick everywhere I went along that trip and were actually a driving hazard. The roads everywhere were littered with uncountable numbers of them that had been killed by vehicles. No doubt I was kind of following the migration north much of that trip, even if it was scheduled by my secretary, but it was still quite a sight. LOL L.

Gorgeous! Nothing like a newly-eclosed butterfly. I wish they could always look so brand-new and brilliant. I've recently seen butterflies flying around in generally overcast and damp conditions and even light rain a couple of times (including earlier today), which kind of debunked my assumption that they won't fly in less than ideal weather. I had a BST once that actually survived nature and made it all the way to a butterfly (there may have been more, but since most of the caterpillars who survived long enough to pupate wandered off to some unknown location to do so, I don't know if they made it or not). I was so fascinated by him, just watching him dry his wings and all that, it never occurred to me to feed him! :) I'm sure he found plenty to eat once he flew off.

They like most of the same nectar plants that other butterflies like, Gardenparty, but they like red flowers more than most. Do you have any turk's cap/malvaviscus drummondii? They like that, also butterfly bush. The host plant is the various types of redbay - persea borbonia, p. palustris, etc. This has been something of an off year for palamedes swallowtails here, maybe because the redbays/swampbays are looking so bad. The caterpillars look very much like spicebush swallowtails, as do the eggs and chrysalids. MissSherry