I thought I was done with Polyphemus moths when the past spring’s group didn’t end up producing any offspring. I was wrong. Last fall, students in a friend’s preschool class found a caterpillar at their school. It made a cocoon and stayed in it all winter. Two weeks ago, a beautiful Polyphemus emerged – a…

The crazed, broken trunks of dying Bradford pear trees emerge from the ground at awkward angles, like wraiths struggling to rise from ancient graves. I’m standing at the corner of Anne Street and Country Club Drive, looking through the trees at the bustling construction site where the new Shamrock Gardens Elementary is slowly taking form….

As the days get hotter, butterfly activity intensifies. It’s a great time for outdoor explorations. I went over to Shamrock on Monday, and the gardens were teeming with all sorts of creatures. With kids away, the insects play. Visit if you can! You can find every butterfly featured in our Shamrock calendar in some form…

July was indeed a month for Luna Moths, with lots of folks in Charlotte and environs raising caterpillars at home. Kids gave them names like Melody, Moonpie, Creeper, Zombie and Steve. Fun. The caterpillars came to us courtesy of Mia and Ana, two of the lady Lunas who grew up in Shamrock classrooms during the…

We started our Shamrock butterfly program by raising Eastern Black Swallowtails. Butterfly eggs can be hard to spot. But Eastern Blacks lay round, bright yellow eggs that stand out clearly. Plant parsley, fennel or another host plant in your yard or in a pot, and you’ll probably get some. Young Eastern Black caterpillars are black…

As summer arrives, small, active Skipper butterflies descend on gardens across Charlotte. Their thick bodies, big eyes and narrow wings make them look like moths. But they have the club-shaped antennae that mark a butterfly. They get their name from their habit of “skipping” from flower to flower. About 70 different species of Skippers live…

As we hunker down at home, Monarch butterflies are on the move. Millions of Monarchs spent the winter in the mountains of Mexico, clustered together in the region’s oyamel firs. A smaller group rested in eucalyptus trees along the California coast. Early in March, as the days lengthened and the temperatures warmed, the butterflies began…

School may be out for now, but butterflies are starting to emerge. It’s a good time to start looking for butterflies, caterpillars and eggs. Check out our Home Butterfly Studies page for resources and suggestions. Keep your eyes open!

The first-graders stare upward, eyes big, foreheads furrowed with disbelief. Above them, a lime-green caterpillar grasps a twig with rosy feet. Sky-blue spots adorn its sides, and its yellow eyes sport huge, dark pupils. It looks like it’s crawled out of a TV cartoon or flown in from some far-off planet. It’s a Spicebush Swallowtail…

Several kinds of Sulphurs visit us at Shamrock. The easiest to identify are the bright lemon-yellow Cloudless Sulphurs. Cloudless Sulphurs and Tiger Swallowtails are the only North Carolina butterflies that can be reliably identified from a distance – even when driving down a highway. We see a lot of Sleepy Orange Sulphurs at Shamrock as…