We were given the opprotunity to watch 8 of these magestic beauties transform in our own home. They were devouring a friends fennel plant, and so we volunteered to take a few off thier hands.
The day after getting them home we had to do a careful search on line as to what to
feed them. We found that they liked Queen Anne's Lace. We had lots of that earlier in the summer, unfortunately most of it had gone to seed and dried up. But we did find a few new leaves shooting up and the caterpillars devoured every bit we fed them.
Hannah and Stephen were able to recognize it after just a few mornings out picking. We did pick most mornings, and enjoyed our morning "walk".
In about a week they began forming chrysalis. It is amazing how the whole thing is just hanging by 2 rather flimsy looking threads that they attach to the plant with. With all the bumping and moving around we did, not one of them fell off.
It took about 2 weeks for all 8 to make their chrysalis. The last one made his the day we left for our weekend trip to Virginia to pick Blueberries at Poppy Lundquist's.
We noticed that when they have completed their
metamorphsis they chrysalis turned clear, appearing black because of the coloring of the butterfly inside. We never acctually got to watch one come out, but we did see the right before and right after. This usually happened for us in the mid morning hours.
The butterflies then hung upside down to dry thier wings. They usually do this on twigs or branches or the stem they have been "hanging out" on. The first one to come out crawled onto Mom's finger - and hung upside down until it's wings had dried.
Once their wings were dry we would let them go in our backyard. One had it's wings folded, but time to dry it's wings helped out and later it too flew away. So far only four of them have come out. Another one was eaten by a pretator, leaving a small hole in the chrysalis. The others are still hanging onto thier branches. We have read of it taking up to 6 months before they come out. So they are still in thier "jar" on the table.
How amazing God has made these delicate, yet hardy insects. Butterflies - what beauties to behold.
