Tag Archives: black swallowtail butterfly

We Got Babies – fawns – wee caterpillars

By


Twin fawns and their Mom blessed us with a visit.
I apologize for the sad quality of the photos.
I took them through the double pane windows and screen.
Fortunately, they’re clear enough you can see the spots on the fawns.

The black swallowtail butterfly eggs started hatching. I was fortunate to see one right after it hatched and got a photo of it.
I haven’t seen it in the past couple days. I’m hoping it’s hiding under the leaves sheltering from the rain.

Wishing you a week of beautiful smiles.

 

Black Swallowtail Butterfly eggs 2024

By

7-18-2024 My curly parsley and marigold pot was visited by a female black swallowtail butterfly.

She laid over a half dozen eggs over the plant.  I took a few photos of some of the eggs. So, pretty soon, there might be some baby caterpillars feeding and growing in the curly leaves.

If the eggs survive and hatch and we figure we’ll be shopping for more parsley soon to feed the brood of caterpillars.

Wishing you all a wonderful rest of the weekend.

 

 

Wildlife Wednesday – Black Swallowtail Caterpillars and Parasitic wasps

By

The Black Swallowtail Caterpillars have been feasting heavily on my parsley. The fennel has almost ran it’s course and I suppose that’s why the Mother Butterflies chose the parsley at last. I’m glad I planted it for just that purpose.

I’m more than a bit miffed about a new discovery with the chrysalises. Apparently there’s parasitic wasps that injects their eggs into the chrysalis. Their young feeds off the butterfly pupae and hatch out. I’ve found several chrysalises with the circular hole in them.

It’s a wonder that butterflies survive at all. 

.

Black Swallowtail Butterfly Lifecycle

By

Here’s my video of the black swallowtail butterfly emerging from it’s chrysalis. It’s pretty neat to see the butterfly emerge and watch it climb as high as it can. My video isn’t perfect, but I’m glad to have it anyway.

Here’s a gallery of the basic lifecycle of the black swallowtail butter from egg to butterfly. 
*There another stage not shown; a shedding of the skin off of the chrysalis. I wasn’t quick enough to capture that stage in a photo or on video.
These photos are from different butterflies. I tried to choose the clearest photos to share. I copied some of them from my video of the chrysalis hatching(?).

And for now, with the exception of watching new caterpillars in the wild, this ends my butterfly farming for the year.  I think it was a success.

Wishing you all a successful week.

*edited in 7-12-2017- Over the past few days, I’ve been watching some black swallowtail butterfly eggs and today I discovered they hatched. I managed to get a photo of the tiny caterpillar less than 24 hours old. I added the photo to the gallery.

.