Giant Swallowtail
Papilio cresphontes
Giant Swallowtail · Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden · 7 February 2026
A Giant Swallowtail in the butterfly house at Fairchild, the largest butterfly in North America, with a wingspan that can top six inches. It is a butterfly of the citrus groves and woodland edges of the American South, and in Florida it flies wild in every garden with an orange tree.
Told from other yellow-and-black swallowtails by the pattern reading as a diagonal band and cross rather than tiger stripes. Its caterpillar is the "orange dog", mottled brown and white to resemble bird droppings, and a long-standing minor pest of citrus groves. When prodded it pushes out a pair of red horns that smell of rancid butter.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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