Photo from webpage Butterfly Species of Wisconsin. All rights reserved.

Variegated Fritillaries

While hardly a common sight, a few Variegated Fritillary pupae overwinter in our area and hatch out in late spring. Look for them on the edges of fields searching for Violets and Passionflowers (where they lay their eggs) or in the fields themselves feeding on flower nectar. While relatively difficult to find now they'll be much more common in a few months as new arrivals from the south migrate into our area and as the young caterpillars which hatch from eggs laid now mature into adults.

From our Archive:

• Gardening for Moths and Butterflies

Offsite links:

• Variegated Fritillary photos from the Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network
• Caterpillar of the Variegated Fritillary, University of Missouri Extension Home Page
• Two related Wisconsin pages,
  • Butterfly Gardening in Wisconsin
  • Butterfly Species Native to Wisconsin with photos
• Just because I stumbled over it, a photo of one of the most dramatic caterpillars I've ever seen: The Hickory Horned Devil

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