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…