Egg laying black swallowtail

[hendi_alex]

I have never seen this before, as only noticed larvae after they are munching and get some size. Just a few minutes ago, during my morning walk, I noticed a black swallowtail in the process of laying eggs. She laid way more than the capacity of my three small clumps of parsley and don't know what I'll do about that. But was interesting to the the critter at work, and I now can I.d. the eggs in the future.

Eggs of large black swallowtail:

[img]https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2501/3899978301_947a552124.jpg[/img]

[img]https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2659/3900758586_11f6cd950e.jpg[/img]

[biwa]

Neat. Since when did swallowtails like parsley? I thought they liked things more along the lines of cherry, willow, or hibiscus.

[applestar]

I think you're thinking of Tiger Swallowtails (yellow with primarily black markings) -- wild cherry, willow. Alex's butterfly is a BLACK swallowtail which uses plants in the carrot family for larval host. Actually hibiscus is used by some species of skippers and hairstreaks. Hairstreak is a tiny butterfly that has a tail on their hindwings like swallowtails.

[hendi_alex]

That pesky swallowtail was a lady with a mission. She and perhaps others must have laid at least 50-75 eggs on three little bunches of parsley. The lavae have eaten the parsley down to the ground, and were about to starve, so now we are buying parsley bunches from the grocery store to feed the critters. My large planting of succession parsley is too young, so was little help, though they did eat that to the ground as well. Some of the larvae look about the right size to start moving to the chrysalis stage. Will be glad when that happens so that my parsley can start recovering and providing US with some leaves.

I have two jars of parsley just loaded with larvae.

[img]https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2556/3962347995_7eafdf16b2.jpg[/img]

[img]https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2520/3962346603_9b1cc3479b.jpg[/img]

[applestar]

Awww.
On the Monarchwatch.org Monarch Butterfly enthusiasts forum they're calling the phenomenon you describe "egg dumping".

You can also use fennel, Queen Ann's Lace, and carrot tops. Parsnip too if you have it. They're beautiful creatures as caterpillars as well as adult butterflies. In my experience, they make green chrysalis if they're eclosing this season -- in about 9~12 days -- but will make brown chrysalis if they're going to overwinter and eclose in the spring.

You're SO lucky! We hardly had ANY black swallowtails this year in our garden compared to the 14 we raised last year (3 of which made brown chrysalises and didn't eclose until May of this year). We found one late caterpillar which has made a brown chrysalis.

Male and Female black swallowtails have distinct differences in the wing markings. https://bugguide.net/node/view/2636