Susan, I bet Ill have Painted Ladies and Checkered Skippers here fighting over the hollyhocks! Lol I was surprised that they got so tall and flower last year already and I have just planting them in the spring. They werent supposed to bloom until the year, according to the packet they came in. Ill also have Malva sylvestris growing here as soon as I get the seeds and get them started, so if Checkered Skippers eat that, then I guess theyll also be fighting with them over those. Maybe they can reach some agreement the one will eat the Hollyhocks and the other will eat the Mallow. Ha. I also have in my notes that Painted Ladies also like Cosmos, but I dont have information saying that the Checkered Skippers eat those, so Im not sure if they do or not. Thank you very much for listing all those plants that the Checkered Skipper eats; I hardly had any of them listed in my file. What what what??? I get Long-tailed Skippers up here??!! Youve gotta be kidding! I have to go look in the butterfliesandmoths website. Hold on. Hey, youre right! I just looked and the website indicates that there are areas in PA that get that one, and guess who lives in one of those areas! Oh my, and I even said to a friend of mine who lives in Florida that I was so envious that LTS are in Florida and they could very well show up in her garden, and I said that my butterfly book doesnt show them being in our state. Once again, theres a discrepancy between the Butterflies through Binoculars book and the butterfliesandmoths website. Well now, it looks like I just might have hit the jackpot here when I bought these magic beans. I really am wondering now if 8 seeds is enough! Im not even sure yet where Im going to put them. The fact is, I dont know right now where Im going to plant most of the plants that Ill have coming up within the next month or two. Ill figure it out somehow. I had 3 different kinds of skippers here last year, but I didnt have those two that were talking about. Wouldnt that be something if Id get five different kinds of skippers on the bean plants! Im adding all of those plants that you mentioned to my file on here so I wont have to keep going here and there to look things up. I appreciate your telling me about the habits of the Long-tailed Skippers too; I didnt really know anything about them other than when I saw their picture in my book, I thought that they were very beautiful. My good camera needs fixed and hard telling if/when thats going to happen, but if I do get Long-tailed Skippers here, Ill take a picture with our webcam; it just wont be nearly as good. I dont know how I managed to miss the Silvery Checkerspot when I was making up my list of PA butterflies. The book also says that we get those, and it looks like they arent scarce, so Id think that I have a pretty good chance of getting those here. Do you think it matters what type of Rudbeckia? Im not familiar with every type thats out there, but I do know R. hirta and R. fulgida. I had the hirta in my garden last year but it fell all over the place, which I didnt like, and I also didnt think the flower was nearly as pretty as the other kind. I emailed a gal who has a butterfly farm in PA (nowhere near here though) and she said that when she had Milberts Tortoiseshells, they would only eat the Stinging Nettle. I would be much more willing to buy false nettle than the stinging kind. I also think that Milberts Tortoiseshell is gorgeous. If I would ever get that plant, it would be something that I would put across the road in our weed patch. I just have to figure out a way to get rid of the weeds that are already over there. One thing though, Im not sure if the weeds Id be getting rid of would be good ones or bad ones. I suppose there are actually some weeds that butterflies dont eat. With my luck I probably have all of those and none of the others. Ha. On the other hand, maybe thats good if I decide to wipe out the whole weed patch and start from scratch. I know Questions Marks and Eastern Commas should be pretty common here, but I didnt see any last year. I know that they dont nectar on flowers. I had a dish of "slop" out for the non-nectaring butterflies but I dont think anyone even ate itif they did, they did it on the sly. I said that I had heard of serviceberry and hawthorn, but no, I dont have any. Are you saying that they are host plants of the Red Spotted Purples? Actually, arent those also bushes that get berries on that birds like? Oh, thanks for that link too! I didnt get a chance to look at it yet but will check it out. Cathy

Congrats, Mike! Was yours a giant giant or a more modestly sized one? There is a big variation in the size of the ones I release - once, there was a super sized one that had emerged at the same time as an extra small one, and the big one was twice as big as the little one. I meant to get a picture of them before releasing them, but forgot. Hops don't host giant swallowtails - they host question marks here, and reportedly commas, red admirals and others. GSTs use members of the citrus family, including ptelea trifoliata/hops tree - maybe that's what you meant. MissSherry

I collected 4 Black Swallowtail eggs about 2 weeks ago - they were all laid at the same time on some Rue and Parlsey that has gone to seed. I was out in the garden and WATCHED the female lay the eggs, and that is probably the only reason I found them, otherwise it seems near impossible to find the eggs or small cats. I kid you not, all four cats are growing in the same container and they are 4 different sizes. The two growing on the Rue clippings are growing more slowly than the 2 on parsley seedheads. One is actually pupating today - another still looks like 2nd instar! Weird! Are some sickly? Could host plants make a difference how fast they grow? These cats preferred to stay on the host plant on which they were laid although they had access to the other. Or maybe, could this be a natural survival mechanism to space out the flight time of the species? I have no idea. We'll see if they all pupate okay.

Fun to guess maybe, but since Papilio individuals fall within a size range for any species, it is pretty much impossible to say which species you saw from the information given. Could have been an individual anywhere between the low or high end of the size range of any species. So it's possible for adults in any of your species to be the exact same size. If the top end of size ranges are considered, size wise Papilio cresphontes is the largest Palilionidae in your area. But as Christie pointed out this is not what would be termed a black species. Your largest "black" species is Papilio glaucus, followed in turn by Battus philinor, Paipilio polyxenes and Papilio triolus. Pictures or if you could note characteristics a give a better description would probably solve the puzzle. Larry