Coyote Hot Date Site

This scratched up sand is on the shore of West Lake. Since it has large canine footprints it may be a sign of coyotes. When a female is in proestrus her urine becomes increasingly attractive to the male. He will sniff intensively over an area she has just urinated in, then urinate over it and scrape the ground vigorously with his paws. The urination/scraping behavior continues with increasing frequency until the female comes into heat for two to five days sometime between mid January and late March. Once the female chooses a partner they may remain paired for a number of years.

Gestation lasts from 60 to 63 days. Litter size averages 6. The young are born blind, limp-eared and pug-nosed. Three to four weeks after birth, the young begin to emerge from the den and by 35 days they are fully weaned. They are fed regurgitated food by both parents. Male pups disperse from the dens in the fall while females stay with the parents and form the basis for the pack.

This is a Cabbage butterfly caterpillar on a garlic mustard leaf. Cabbage butterfly caterpillars feed on plants in the mustard family and garlic mustard is in the mustard family but I haven't heard of these caterpillars eating garlic mustard.

Butterflies sometimes lay eggs on plants that the caterpillars cannot reach maturity on. They start to feed, maybe make it through a few instars, and then die. An example of this is the West Virginia White. The original food plant is toothwort. The adult gets confused by the smell of garlic mustard, lays eggs on it, and the caterpillars die. This has resulted in West Virginia White populations being drastically reduced as garlic mustard has spread.

I don't think this caterpillar is going to die from the garlic mustard because it is full-sized. Caterpillars frequently move from their host plant when they are ready to pupate but I didn't see any other mustard family plants nearby. Could it be that one of our Cabbage butterflies has evolved the ability to eat garlic mustard?

Even if our Cabbage butterflies develop a taste for garlic mustard, they probably won't be a good biologic control for garlic mustard because they taste too good to predators such as wasps, spiders, and birds. This is why they have protective coloration instead of conspicuous coloration. We will have to keep pulling unless and until other biologic controls are proven out and released.