We came home from a quick weekend trip on August 4 and had a chrysalis and one more caterpillar was up on the top of the butterfly tent soon after.
By August 8th, this was the scene:
I let our littlest caterpillar (who was a surprise birth while we were gone) live in the windowsill free range for a bit until his poops got too big (lol) and needed more containment.
On August 11th, we officially had three chrysalises:
By August 14th we had FOUR chrysalises (Buddy, Straight Line, Cars, and Rock and Roll) and Speeder was getting ready!
August 18th was a BIG DAY! Buddy Nectar emerged as a butterfly!! I have to pull a few photos off of the SD card in my 'real' camera, so stay tuned for a butterfly post coming probably tomorrow. Here are a few pictures, though. First is Buddy in his/her chrysalis about 20 minutes prior to emerging. The second is of Buddy just after emerging with wings still pretty folded up. I never got a good look at the wings to determine sex so we aren't sure if Buddy turned out to be male or female. Oh well!
Four days later, on August 22nd, Straight Line and Cars emerged from their chrysalises as well.
Here's a picture of Cars before taking off:
We also adopted a seventh caterpillar on Aug 25th. He's a late bloomer and was in a field that I worried might be mowed soon as we approach the cooler temps here in VT. We've named him Nectarine as a tribute to Buddy Nectar. On Monday 9/1 he was hanging in J formation from a leaf of milkweed in our butterfly tent! So cool. Pics to come.
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| Nectarine as a little caterpillar on 8/25 |
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| Nectarine on 8/31 |
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