As you all know, we were able to witness a monarch butterfly lay eggs on our plant in Raelee's butterfly garden, eggs hatch, larvae grow, turn into a chrysalis, hatch out (not sure if this is the correct terminology, but it's what we say), and fly away. Absolutely amazing. Each time we raise butterflies, we learn more and more and it is such a rewarding experience. This was even more so because the eggs were laid in Raelee's butterfly garden. Wonderful!!
Here is a summery of our last 3 weeks. :)
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| Laying Eggs |
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| Ready to hatch |
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| Small Larvae..just hatched. |
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| Growing up! |
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| Some are lucky enough to not get eaten by this wasp or hornet. We saw them carry off several smaller larvae. :( |
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| Pretty soon, we had no more leaves on our plant. I had to run to the nearest town and buy several more. I have since sold 2 of them (with larvae on them) to friends so that they can witness what we did! |
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| I brought a handful of them inside so that we could see the transformation closer...and boy did we! |
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| In the process of forming the chrysalis. |
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| The skin moves up the caterpillar and what's left is the chrysalis. |
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| Then the shape of it changes. |
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| This is what the chrysalis looks like when it's done. They have pretty gold markings on it...not yellow gold, more like a gold ring gold! |
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| This is what it looks like right before it comes out of it's chrysalis. |
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| This is how we got math done yesterday...right in front of the cage (that daddy built) so that we could watch one hatch out. |
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| YAY! She emerged! |
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| Thankfully, it avoided getting eaten by purple martins....but not by much. |
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| This one happens to be a boy (the black dots on the lower wings mean it's a boy). Isn't he beautiful? | | | | |
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1 comments:
Ab.so.lute.ly. GORGEOUS!!! We did a butterfly habitat in K, but my pics aren't anything like yours!! These are beautiful, Stephenie!!
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