Our Butterfly Story

I've been trying to get this post written for almost a week now, but somehow things keep coming up.  We released this little guy last Friday before going to the art museum.

It all began on Tuesday, August 14th when I discovered something unusual happening to the parsley plant on the back deck.  It had these ittle green things crawling all over it.  After a little research, I learned they were caterpillars of the Eastern Black Swallowtail. We put a few inside of our butterfly pavilion, along with what was left of the parsley.  After a couple of trips to the nursery, I had a some new juicy parsley plants for them to eat. 

Originally, I captured only two of them, but one was inadvertantly squashed, so I decided to get some more.  When all was said and done, three survived to form a crystalis.  Only one crystalis survived to maturity, however, and after a couple of days of observation, we released it to the wild.

Total time from capture to release was 16 days.   It was enough time for 2 entries into our nature notebooks, one for caterpillar and one for butterfly stage. (I slipped a crystalis entry into mine too.) It was also enough time to get to know lots of information about these creatures. 

The most fun part of it all was watching the caterpillar on the day before he built his crystalis.  The field guide says they normally travel far away to do this after they finish eating.  Well, these little guys were trying to do just that.  They must have traveled up and down the sides of the pavilion and around and around the top a hundred times.  I couldn't sleep that night and I just came downstairs to watch them go.  Then when we got up in the morning, they were still and looked like this:

Then later like this:

To see more photos, check out my photo album on the right.  I tried to put them into order, but somehow they got jumbled up.

Comments

[Kelly]

Wow...that is amazing. How cool that you got to see the whole process so closely!

[JacciM]

Wow :) What a fantastic experience for you to share with your children! I'm not sire if you've heard, but there is a CM blog carnival starting this week. I'm hosting the first edition. Would you consider submitting this entry? This edition's theme is "The Great Outdoors", so your post fits right in! :) If you would like more info, here is a link:

http://www.xanga.com/salmonme

Thanks for visting my nature blog :)

Jacci

[Jacci from The Educational Life]

I wanted you to know that you've inspired me to plant a good bit of parsley in the spring in hopes of luring these lovely butterflies to lay their eggs in our garden. They are one of my favorite butterflies and the caterpillars are almost as beautiful! :)

[Jacci from The Educational Life]

I wanted you to know that you've inspired me to plant a good bit of parsley in the spring in hopes of luring these lovely butterflies to lay their eggs in our garden. They are one of my favorite butterflies and the caterpillars are almost as beautiful! :)