Metamorphosis of the Eastern Black Swallowtail
2009 August 19
Nature amazes me, no matter how many times I’ve seen this before, each witness feels as if it’s the first time!
We happily set her free and on her way as soon as she was ready to fly! For a very cool slide show to see the differences between male and female and different types of butterflies click here.
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Beautiful pictures! We just raised and release a black swallowtail last month, and are now raising Monarchs. We’ve released one already, and have three in chrysalises, two munching and a couple eggs on the milkweed. Every time i gather milkweed for them i bring home another monarch egg.
i agree it’s completely amazing every time we see it! Great post!
Very nice pictures of the emergence!
I like my monster..; I try another one
I could write “c’est magnifique” on every post ! I particularly like the birth of the butterfly ; the “tournesols” are beautiful too !!! And, then, I’m waiting to see the head of my monster for this comment
This is such a beautiful series of photos! Thank you for sharing this.
so cool now I know what the cocoon looks liek so maybe I can see where our guy is hiding.
BTW – thankyou for your visit and very kind comment about my shell twiddling!
Utterly exquisite. Swallowtails are so very rare here and although the wing ‘designs’ are the same the colour combos are different. Any metamorphosis is a great wonder but this one is incredibly special.
Wow… that’s stunning. You are SO lucky to have caught it. I’ve never seen a butterfly emerge… now I have! This is definitely a post for Friday’s Nature Table. I love you new site… I’ve had a little look around and everything is so easy to find. I love the little amoebas for the comments… too funny!
Blessings and magic.
Very fine!
The pics are so beautiful!
I hope we can grow milkweed and get monarchs next year!
Very beautiful Lisa.
Our black swallowtail is in the chrysalis phase now, but this morning we woke up to see our polyphemus had emerged! Photo coming soon….
Gorgeous series of photographs! You captured the metamorphosis in all it’s wonder
very cool. Did you find this caterpillar in your garden or did you order it?
Kyndale, we found it on our Queen Anne’s Lace plants. My garden includes a lot of host plants for caterpillars. We have the best success with the Eastern Black Swallowtail, they are easy to lure in with parsley, dill, fennel and QAL.
Oooooh!!! These pictures are so nice and the caterpillar is so beautiful! (the butterfly, too)
So lovely! We have mostly moths around here, so when we found a caterpillar that was strikingly colored, I was so excited to maybe have found a butterfly! Turns out it was a moth, but no less exciting for that, really. Hold on, I’ll go find you the link … here it is.
http://unprocessedfamily.blogspot.com/2009/08/our-first-caterpillar-to-moth.html
lovely!
VERY pretty!!!
Princess and I thought this was so cool!
you are an amazing teacher and mother! how do you come up with all these ideas?
Beautiful! We raised Gulf Fritillary caterpillars last year and loved it! We’d love to come across other species to bring in and observe, but have yet to find any
beautiful pictures. The caterpillar is well fed!