Here's how they looked when I checked on April 8 th:
And here they are just this morning!
If you need a reminder that life goes on even in these days of the Covid 19 Pandemic what a great and positive example for you and your family.
Even better than watching the caterpillars grow is the fact that eventually you'll have butterflies that you can watch fly around the screened grow enclosure (available where you order the caterpillars) in your home for a few days before you release them outdoors.
How great is it that something in this crazy world can fly free and go wherever it wants to.
For those of you who can't do this themselves, stay posted and watch these grow.
Saturday Afternoon
It's amazing how much difference there can be in just a day. You can see more of the markings on the bodies, more of the legs and they're moving around quite a lot as they eat their way through the food on the bottom of the container...and of course leave quite a bit of waste behind
April 11 th
I didn't get any photos on the 12th because they were moving around so much and so active getting ready to spin their chrysilis
April 13
Here you can see that one of them has already finished.
April 14
The rest of them are working on theirs too.
It won't be long before they're ready to be moved into the screen habitat to finish the transformation.
April 16th was moving day. The most important thing here is to very gently remove extra threads and debris so that there is nothing in the way of the butterflies being able to work themselves out of the chrysilis
Sometimes it's a bit of a mess. They can get agitated and start shaking on you. Don't let it scare you. It's just a reflex.
Here they are for the next week or so until they are ready to emerge as butterflies. I can hardy wait!
April 20,2020
I didn't have to wait long. When I woke up this morning I found 2 butterflies out of their chrysalis
and just stretching and drying their wings.
Later on they were flying a bit and feeding on orange slices ad a bit of sugar water.
Just as I was getting ready to call it a night one more had come out and was hanging off the end of the chrysalis it had come out of. I'm sorry the netting makes this photo a bit hard to see.
I should be able to get better pictures tomorrow. It also looks like one more of the butterflies will be out by then.
It wasn't long before they were all out and this time I thought you might like to see what's left behind once they come out:
Are there any questions that you have?
I've got lot of photos but am not sure if you'd like them all here so I'll just enclose a selection:
What you're seeing in the bottom of the habitat is paper towels soaked in sugar water and next to that cut up oranges for them to feed on.
Happy, hungry butterflies.
The can't be released until the temps are above 50 degrees F. all the time. The night temps are sometimes in the 30's so we brought them out with us this afternoon because it was 60 degrees F. As you can see they stretched their wings out and were really enjoying it.
Hopefully it won't be long before they can be safely released to enjoy the rest of their lives flying free. In the meantime I'm really enjoying watching them and they seen quite happy.
They aren't flying much yet and I wait a few days until they're strong, flying and getting ready to go. Eventually they'll get restless and head for the opening to let me know that they're ready to move on.
We take them outside days and they're flying more, getting stronger and eating better. I just hope the nigh time temps come up enough that they'll be able to fly all of the places that we can't and take our dreams along with them.
It won't be long my fly babies, I'll miss your but I rejoice in your freedom.
We stat over coffee quite a while as we watched and waited for the butterflies to take flight. As you can imagine it was a very pleasant and rewarding afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment