The Cairns Birdwing, Ornithoptera priamus euphorion (formerly Troides euphorion), is our biggest and one of our most spectacular butterflies (female, male) and it is one of the few that we actively encourage in our garden. The adults only need nectar and they aren’t very fussy about which flowers they feed on, but their caterpillars only eat one plant, the Aristolochia vine, so our encouragement takes the form of planting the vine.
From five weeks ago until last week we had a semi-resident female attended by a couple of males, and she was laying eggs as though she was going to repopulate the whole suburb, if not the whole city. That’s great, we thought, as she flitted from one creeper to another … and then they all started hatching.
And eating.
We don’t mind the caterpillars eating the creeper – that’s what it’s there for – but their appetites are enormous because they have to grow to the size of my middle finger before they are ready to pupate, and before long we could see that they were in trouble: our vines were not big enough to feed them all and they were likely to starve before they matured.
What to do? We moved a couple of caterpillars to a young vine that their mum hadn’t noticed … but then watched in dismay as a bigger vine wilted and died; picked caterpillars off the dying leaves and moved them to another vine; watched that vine shrink by the hour under a double load of ever-larger munchers; asked neighbours if they had vines (no luck); gave some caterpillars to a friendly school-child whose (enlightened) school had vines; gave some more to a friend whose friends had vines; and hoped that the remaining leaves would last our remaining caterpillars until they pupated.
So far, so good: one pupa that we know of (there may be one or two more) hanging on the one surviving vine, two more caterpillars which are so big they must be ready to follow suit, and still half a dozen leaves for them to eat. Phew!
But if their mum comes back, we will have to lock her away from her boyfriends. Enough is enough, okay?