Black Swallowtail Butterflies - Part IV

So when I last posted, we had left our friends in a state of almost suspended animation.  Let's fast-forward almost 2 weeks.  It takes approximately 12-14 days for the entire metamorphosis to be complete.  Everything I had read stated that it would take these beautiful creatures quite a while to struggle out of the confines of the chrysalis, but darned if ours didn't just pop right out.

One Sunday, I woke up early (they seemed to favor coming out in the mornings) and perched myself and my camera at the terrarium and waited.  And waited. And waited...I just KNEW, based on how dark the chrysalises had become, that I had one or two ready to break free, and I was going to catch them in the act, by golly!  You can actually see the colors of their wings through the shell and when they darken (especially the green ones) you know that the time for them to come out is near.  I sat there for five or six hours, but I DID get the pictures, and my son grabbed my blackberry and took video.

I actually did a series of blogs about this experience, and it can be found here:  http://butterflybyjulie.blogspot.com/

There are also two videos that we posted; one of the caterpillar shedding its final skin, and one of the actual butterfly breaking free, so please feel free to go check out the blog. It follows our experience from start to finish!

Until next time.....

Black Swallowtail Butterflies - Part III

As you can see from the picture, our caterpillars do take some time out to prepare to do the "metamorphosis-thing."

The caterpillars get really large, and eat like crazy.  You can tell when they are about to "string up" and prepare to get their beauty-sleep.  The cats will eat just a little more, then, instead of little brown pellets, they will evacuate everything they don't need by way of something green, slimy and liquid.  Once you see that substance collecting around your terrarium, you then know that it's about time for the great nap.  

Still cats, they will produce a VERY strong thread that attaches them to whatever it is they are sitting on.  This year I have some on twigs, some on the side of the glass, and some attached to the flower pot the host plant is in.  Once strung up, it takes up to 24 hours for them to finally decide to shed that final caterpillar skin.  As you can see from the right side of the two images, the skin will literally split, and then is shed.

In the left-hand picture you see the chrysalis.  These can change color depending on what they are attached to.  The two I currently have attached to twigs are dark brown, and blend in wonderfully to their surroundings.  The ones that strung up to the blue flower pot are a medium green color, much like the left-hand picture.  The ones strung up on the glass are a vibrant green.

Stay tuned...tomorrow we'll be visiting the new butterfly!

Swallowtail Butterflies - Part II

Because it is butterfly season here at our house, I am dedicating some of this week's blogs to the life cycle of the black swallowtail butterfly.

The attached image is another instar picture.  Once we brought the parsley plant indoors and placed it into the terrarium, the caterpillars continued eating.  And eating.  And eating.

We made several trips to the grocery store to pick up more parsley, because they had eaten the original host plant down to about nothing, so we would add more fresh parsley daily, and the caterpillars would completely devour the leaves within the day.

Because we had such luck with our butterflies last year (and the first batch even emerged as late as last spring from the previous summer) we decided to plant more parsley and see if we might be able to do it again.  Sure enough, during the third week of July, a huge black swallowtail circled our back deck one afternoon, and deposited a bunch of eggs.  Before we knew it, we had seventeen caterpillars chowing down on our host parsley plant.  When we noticed that they were starting to crawl out of the pot, we moved to pot to the terrarium again, and made sure that we had plenty of parsley in the refrigerator.

The attached image is from a macro series that I did last year when we raised our first set of caterpillars.  After having released four brand new butterflies this weekend, it's fun to look back to see what they were just a few short weeks ago.

Tomorrow - about the pupa-chrysalis stage.

Black Swallowtail Butterflies - Part I - Eggs to Instars

In honor of the four butterflies we released this weekend, I wanted to do several blogs regarding the life cycle of the black swallowtail butterfly...so here we go...

Last summer, oh, about the last couple of days in July, we noticed that in our herb garden we had visitors to our parsley plant.  Really HUNGRY visitors!  They came to us in the form of little green caterpillars.  We really didn't think too much about them, but the following Saturday morning, after a particularly heavy rain storm, these little caterpillars were still greedily consuming my parsley plant.  We also noticed that there appeared to be eggs embedded within the leaves of our parsley.  

Being the Google addict that I am, I went into the house, jumped on to the computer and started looking up caterpillars.  After about thirty minutes of research, I found a picture of a caterpillar that looked like the ones we had on the leaves of our plant.  It appeared that these little guys were going to become, sometime in the future, black swallowtail butterflies.  Once this was established (I Googled the heck out of "black swallowtail caterpillars" and learned more than I ever expected to), Johnny and I went to the local pet supply store and purchased a ten gallon aquarium/terrarium and a screened lid.

We got our purchases home, and placed the pot with the parsley into the terrarium, and covered it with the screen.  Of course, I grabbed my camera and shot a bunch of pictures.  I wanted to document everything!  Some of what I captured you will find in this blog, as well as the blogs in the coming days.

What you see today is an egg and an instar at its earlier stage.  Caterpillars go through various instar stages, and I will share those with you in the coming days.

In the meantime, I encourage you to do a little Googling about black swallowtail butterflies and their life cycles.  Who knows? Maybe you will be raising some yourself next year!

Until next time....

Redwood Trees

I am going to try to start a new daily blog using pictures that I have taken during my travels and everyday life.

The attached photo is a redwood tree.

This monstrosity was growing in the front yard of a historical home in Napa, California.

Redwoods have always been part of my life...Yes, I know.  I haven't lived in California since 1984, but while you can take the girl out of California, you can't take California out of the girl. *shrug*  What can I say?  My earliest memories are of trips to the woods up Highway 9 to Big Basin Redwoods State Park (Big Basin to us locals).  Even in high school, when I started dating guys with cars, all of our favorite outings were to Big Basin to walk amongst these gorgeous giants.

Apparently, redwood trees don't grow anywhere but on the west coast.  I didn't appreciate them nearly as much as I should have, but hindsight is 20/20, right?  As a young person, I just assumed that redwoods were EVERYWHERE, but, alas, no, they aren't.

Back where I grew up we had redwood fences, redwood decks, redwood planters, you name it....Here in my new home state we don't have that.  We have pressure treated wood, and that's all good, too, but I have to admit, I miss my redwoods.  :)

Should any of you have the opportunity to go to Northern California, I recommend taking a trip through redwood forests, if you can...(And as I'm writing this, I have the lyrics to that popular song that most of us learned in elementary school:  "From the redwood forests, to the gulf stream wa-aters; this land was made for you and me!"

Have a great day, everyone!

Till next time.....