This Years Butterflies

In these days when so many of us are stuck at home it's nice to notice changes day to day so imagine my surprise this morning to see how much the caterpillars have grown.

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.

Building a low cost Butterfly Habitat for Raising Caterpillars

This habitat at 3 ft wide, 3 ft tall and 1ft. wide is much larger than most people would need but there had been a mix up with our last caterpillar order and we ended with 4 times as many as we normally get and we were in a hurry to find a home for them all. 

We bought 2, 1x4,s 6ft long and 1 , 2x12 6ft long at a total cost of $10.14

We had a roll of window screen on hand and salvaged an old door so I'm not sure what those would cost you.

Construction was easy, we simply cut all of the boards in half. The wide boards became the top and bottom and the narrow ones for the upright corners.

Once we got everything together we had to salvage one more board to frame the door in with.

Here's the finished product. After we've raised and released all of these we'll be adding casters to what is the top here. That will give us a freestanding unit that can be rolled wherever we need it. The reason we'll turn it over is so that the door will be on top and easy for me to reach from my wheelchair.

We are still waiting for most of the butterflies to come out.

Here is the first one to appear.

I've got food, flowers and nectar in the habitat for them.

While they were in the house a couple of butterflies got out and lived with us for a while. One lived in the window next to my work table but didn't show any interest in going outside even though we tried it get it to go.

It stayed about 4 days and then Doug reached for it and it let him carry it outside where it sat on his hand and enjoyed the sun before it flew high up toward our big pine trees.

A few days later we decided to take the habitat outside and see if any of the others were ready to leave.

On the day we did that another one flew around the house and Doug gave it a ride outdoors.

The Butterflies get moved out into the garden

Even though we left the door of the habitat open but not all of the butterflies were in a hurry to leave.

This one sat on that flower for quite a long time before finally flying away.

What a great way to spend the day.