Another new friend

Another black swallowtail butterfly was born, on 8-9-2010. My daughter chcecked when she woke up and saw no activity. I never thought to check that morning, and while doing house work later in the day, i went into the laundry room (where the tank was located) and got a big surprise!

Our butterflly was out and was ready to fly away! We only got to spend about 3 mintues with him before he flew off into the trees. He was amazing to look at!

This one was a male, see the very small amount of blue on his back?

Meet the butterfly!

One of our black swallowtail butterflies emerged this morning. This is the one that was in the green chrysalis. I noticed on saturday evening 8-7-2010 that her chrysalis was becoming transparent and I could see her spots!

I missed when she first crawled out, but still got many good pictures afterwards!

Saturday evening. 5:49 p.m. 8-7-2010

You can see the spots towards the bottom

Here she is drying her wings 9:37 a.m Sunday morning. 8-8-2010

We had to be leaving so we had to take her outside to let her wings dry more

10:28 a.m.

You can tell thats its a female by the amount of blue on her back

Genesis 1:24-25 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Raising SwallowTail Butterflys

For the past few weeks I have been raising some Black Sallowtail butterflys in my home.

 I had heard that fennel attracted butterflys and I was planting a butterfly gardren, so I decided to get some!

Little did I know how much it would attract the Black Swallowtail butterfly!

First you get a egg (or in my case, tons of eggs)

They are usually yellow in color and are very tiny

Here they are pretty soon after hatching, maybe right before the 2nd instar. they are only about 1 cm long. Before this they are so small its hard to get a picture without a  macro

The caterpillars have 5 different instars (or stages)

This is at a 2rd or 3rd instar, still not the green/orange color but not as tiny anymore.

Here you can see that the color has changed! This can really happen over night! So far all these pictures happened outside. This was the stage when Mr. Cardinal in my backyard would start stealing my caterpillars! I added a ceramic cardinal out to the garden and that helped a bit.
4th Instar (still has spikes on  head)

In this photo you can see the shedded skin, he has entered the 5th instar and will keep eating until he is ready to from a chrysalis. This was taken in the house.

Green Chrysalis (in the home)

Can you see the small piece of silk he used to attach (this one is attached to a piece of fennel, hence his color)

Brown Chrysalis (in the home)

Please check back soon to see our beautiful butterfly!