Emergence!

If you ever desire the experience of observing caterpillar metamorphosis, I highly recommend planting carrots. Turns out the black swallowtail butterfly lays its eggs exclusively on members of the carrot family (Queen Anne's Lace works as well), so if you've got a stand of carrots, as we do, you're quite likely to find these beautiful caterpillars fattening themselves on them. I read that these are easy to raise, and it proved true. We picked some carrot greens and put one of the little fellas in our butterfly "cage" and within a couple of days he had formed his chrysalis. I taped the carrot stem to the inside of the top of our cage. Yesterday I noticed that the black of his new wings and body was visible through the chrysalis, which had looked solid green until that point. He emerged not too long before we got up this morning. I found him with still-wilty wings, pumping them slowly. We took the cage outside. Opening the top, I offered my finger for him to climb onto and brought him out of the cage. After a few more pumps and some minutes in the warmth of the sun, he was ready to go, alighting on zinnias and rudbeckia on his way.

The newly-formed chrysalis. Too bad the viewing screen is kaput on the camera, I would have tried to get a better shot of it.

Still wrinkly this morning after hatching inside the butterfly garden...

Another view before taking him outside...


His wee feet gripping my finger and defying gravity. Galen did NOT want to hold him!

Wish I had thought about focal length when taking these. Again, drat the broken screen!

Pumping up the wings some more...

Last shot, just seconds before liftoff. Yay!

The empty chrysalis (with the nicely focused chicken coop/ storage shed in the background :S).