One of the things you quickly learn with a butterfly garden is the cycle of life can be intense. We have several milkweed stations. And regularly we see caterpillars munching away, then nothing. No chrysalis’. No sign of the caterpillars. They just vanish.
I began reading about all the threats caterpillars face. Then I decided to set up a field camera and try and figure out what’s taking out the caterpillars, so I could see if there’s a way to protect them more. This was my first experiment trying to find out what is happening. And I did not expect what I captured on camera instead.
Sorry the image is blurry. But you can make out the glorious colors on this bird. Isn’t it magnificent? I quickly did a Google search, and its a Painted Bunting. As I read about it, I also saw that Florida Fish and Wildlife is trying to track sightings. So we filled out a sighting report. My family is intrigued to see if we end up with more of them.
I think this is a male. It is at least 2 years old due to its coloring. At first I suspected it ate some of our caterpillars. The Milkweed plant it is perched on had 9 caterpillars munching away at one time. But I do not think it was the caterpillars this guy was after upon further reading. This time of year, I think the bird is more interested in seeds. And our Milkweed is full of seed pods I left alone since the caterpillars were munching away on them too. Our video as you see did not catch the bird eating caterpillars, but admittedly most of them were high up out of camera view at this point.
We plan to upgrade cameras soon. So I hope we catch more amazing visitors. Meantime I am so glad that of all gardens, this guy graced ours for a bit. And that I had caterpillars milling about on the Milkweed afterward!
