butterfly magic

   We've been lucky enough over the past few years to see some amazing butterfly transformations and this year has been no exception :) We found two Black Swallowtail caterpillars in our yard a month back munching on the dill in the back yard.

 

 

Then we found two chrysalis  and after doing some reading about their hatch times (about 10 days early in the summer) we decided to bring them inside to keep watch. We did a monarch last year, but found tons of information on line about others doing them. The swallowtails made me a little more nervous because later in the summer they 'overwinter' and that kind of sounds technical :)

 

 

 

so we waited and watched...

 

First hatch in the kitchen

 

We carried him outside and watched him fly after a few hours

 

second hatch the next day just a few seconds after he came out of the chrysalis
 

two hours later he was still working on pumping up his wings



We're now watching a tinny swallowtail caterpillar that hatched from a pin sizes egg on some dill we have on the kitchen counter. The egg was so small I had a hard time getting a photo of it, but we were lucky to catch that hatch too for the first time. That caterpillar will overwinter so we'll keep him inside for a while, and then let him find some digs to overwinter in...from what I've read a sturdy stick under some cover. Nature sure is fascinating!

 

smaller then a grain of rice!