Butterflies have chosen my garden in which to hatch this summer. We had at least two batches of Black Swallowtail butterflies like these that chose fennel plants as food.
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| Black Swallowtail Butterfly caterpillars on fennel |
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| Black Swallowtail Butterfly adult |
On the Butterfly Weed, Monarch butterflies laid eggs. After munching away on the plant for a couple of weeks, the caterpillars climbed to several different spots: on the fence, pictured below, on branches of bushes, and even on the electrified chicken fence, to form chrysalises. The one below had hung on the fence for a couple of weeks, and waited there until it was time to leave the chrysalis. This simple creature knows the appointed time for its emergence, and it will not rush.
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| Monarch Butterfly caterpillar the day before it emerged as an adult |
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24 hours later
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The chrysales in the above two pictures are of the same butterfly; I had to put a piece of paper behind the second one so the camera would focus on the detail of the wings and not the house. (I used my phone).
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| Brand-new butterfly |
The butterfly above is from the same batch of caterpillars, but it's not the same one pictured above in the chrysalis. Although I visited the butterfly pictured in the chrysalis every 15 minutes to half an hour, it didn't decide to emerge until we had to leave the house for a couple of hours in midafternoon, so I got no pictures of it emerging.
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| The same butterfly above from a different angle has more fully emerged |
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| Another new butterfly; note the wrinkled wings |
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| We didn't notice this one, in a antique rose bush I rooted from one at my grandmother's home, until we saw the orange wings. |
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| We found the one from the chrysalis photos resting in the pine straw when we came home from our errands. |