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Monday, July 2, 2012

Painted Ladies

I don't know if you remember, but back in March I posted about the Butterfly Book I made for my oldest grandson (7 yrs).  Truth be told, I made two books.  The oldest grandson has a little brother, and I try to be very fair to both boys.  The youngest (3 yrs) isn't quite old enough to truly understand like the 7 yr old does, but he naturally likes being like big brother.

Do you remember at the bottom of the Butterfly Book post I showed and mentioned that I purchased a Live Butterfly Garden (actually 2)??
source
Well guess what??  They're here....... !!!!!!




They had to wait until it would be warm enough for the butterflies before the caterpillars were shipped to them.  That is why there is so much time lapse between the post and now.

My daughter, being the lovely person she is, took these photos for me so I could update everyone. 

Saturday, June 16, 2012

The caterpillars have arrived and are happy in their containers.  The stuff at the bottom is their food.  The round stuff is their waste.


Monday, June 18, 2012

They have started to build their cocoons.


Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Nearly all of the cocoons are complete.  There is still one caterpillar hanging out.


Saturday, June 23, 2012

Putting the lids of the containers and the cocoons into the net containers


Monday, June 25, 2012

The first Painted Lady Butterfly has emerged from her cocoon!

My 7 yr old grandson and his other grandparents (Becky of Beckys bits n pieces) went fishing and camping and he didn't get to see the butterfly come out of the cocoon. Hopefully he will get to experience at least one of the others.


Tuesday, June 26, 2012

There are a total of 4 butterflies now, although only two are showing in this photo.


Wednesday, June 27, 2012

This is the 5th butterfly; 4 more to go!  Isn't this a GREAT photo!?!  You can even see the lady's eyes!


Down to 3 cocoons to go; this photo is showing 2 of them.  If you look close you can see the spots on the wings through the cocoon.


This Painted lady just barely came out of the cocoon and the wings are still bunched up.



The boy missed all the 'births' (emergings) of the 9 butterflies.  While he was camping and fishing he caught this one, they now have 10 butterflies in a cage!!  What an exciting experience for my grandson that just LOVES butterflies!  We're guessing that this one is a Yellow Swallowtail Butterfly.  If you're a butterfly officiano and know truly what kind of butterfly this is please let me know.

In doing some research for my daughter to help her figure out what to buy to feed the butterflies I found some interesting sites that educate us all on the life cycle of a butterfly.  One of the things I found was:

You can find it here to print
From the same site there are lots of other printouts as well.

This site has an animated version of the butterfly life cycle.  There are lots of other links as well at this site.



This site has several photos of the different stages including these two:

Caterpillar Becoming a Chrysalis


Butterfly Emerging from a Chrysalis

Do you want to learn about the anatomy of a butterfly?

Check out this site

So much to learn about butterflies; something we take for granted every day.

Now my grandsons have an ant colony to watch!  What an exciting time to be a young man.


UPDATE:  All the butterflies have been released.
My daughter went out into the yard later and one was not flying apparently it has messed up wings.  They put that one back into the net cage and will feed it until it dies naturally.



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3 comments:

  1. as a pre-k teacher we did this project every year (with the painted ladies)
    We released them shortly after they emerged, but milkweed (as I recall) is where they naturally would lay their eggs so the caterpillars could eat.
    However, all that being said, have you checked the lifespan? I think it is VERY short.
    thanks for a walk down memory lane!
    gail

    ReplyDelete
  2. wow! what a fascinating post and awesome photos ~ Such a wonderful magical experience for you and your family ~ sad about the last butterfly ~ still hoping she will thrive ~ thanks, ^_^ (A Creative Harbor)

    Thanks for linking up to Magical Monday Meme on A Creative Harbor ^_^ ~

    ReplyDelete
  3. Amazing! My girls would love this! Hope you'll share at my party:
    http://kraftykat76.blogspot.com/2012/07/gettin-krafty-with-it.html

    ReplyDelete

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