🦋Beautiful Butterflies 🦋
The warm and humid weather makes June the perfect time for butterflies to start emerging and fluttering through wildflowers and gardens.
There are approximately 18,500 named species of butterflies all over the world. Here is a quiz to identify some of the more common UK species: https://www.sporcle.com/games/Woorsie/uk-butterflies-picture-click
I have purchased a butterfly kit and the caterpillars were sent to me in a culture pot and in 2-3 weeks, they will eat, spin silk, and grow until they are 10x bigger than they were when they arrived. When they are ready, they will form chrysalides and then in another 1-2 weeks, they will emerge as Painted Lady butterflies! (pictured above)
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You could also join in by sharing any photos you capture of butterflies in your area
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Day 11 - not much observable change but I did see one or two of them shaking about.
Day 12 - it's moving day! Now that the chrysalides are as strong as they can be, I carefully removed the lid of the cup and placed it into the 'Chrysalis station'. I used a cotton bud to carefully remove any silk webbing - this is important as otherwise their wings could get caught up in it when they emerge. I then placed them inside the pop-up habitat, close to the edge of it so they have something to hold on to when they are ready.
Who would like to name one?
1 - bottom, 2-left, 3 - top left, 4 - top right, 5 - right
Day 13 and 14 - (day 4 and 5 of Chrysalis stage) Not much visual change today and tricky to get a good photo through the mesh but I will try again tomorrow. Whilst it looks like not much is going on, there is a magical transformation happening inside!
Day 15 and 16 (day 6 and 7 of chrysalis stage) - the chrysalides have started to darken - 1 - Lou, 2 Emo and 4- Sun seem to be darker than the other 2 which makes sense as some of the caterpillars formed their chrysalis a day earlier. Darkening can be a sign that they are getting ready to emerge!
Day 17 (day 8 of chrysalis stage)
By morning, 3 of the butterflies had emerged! And then the 4th butterfly (Misty) emerged at some point during the day when I was at work so I've missed all 4 emerging from their chrysalis' 😥 I'm gutted that I didn't get to see it but the flutterbyes are too cute to be mad at them for breaking free without me. And nature waits for no one.
The newest butterfly spent some time resting on the top of the chrysalis station and then joined the others by resting on the side of the netting, with their wings mainly closed and occasionally stretching them to get used to how their new wings feel!
When butterflies emerge, they dispel something called meconium from the abdomen to get rid of anything not needed to complete metamorphosis. It looks like a red liquid but isn't blood (insect blood is actually greenish-yellow in colour). I will try and keep out meconium from pictures as best as possible.
So it's just our Angel left to emerge. It's hard to photograph but I can see the wing pattern all folded up inside so it's very close to emerging. I will now be taking the habitat everywhere with me (not leaving the house) until the last one emerges as I desperately want to see one emerge.
I've also added half an orange to the habitat so that the new butterflies have something to feed on.
Day 18 (day 1 of all butterflies)
So somewhere between 3:30am and 6:30am, Angel, our last remaining Chrysalide split open and burst it's way out so I missed all of them emerging :( .
But there has been lots of wing flapping and fluttering and a few of them have visited the orange but I haven't seen them feed yet.
Day 21 - so the butterflies continued to feed and practice using their wings. I topped up the fruit and sugar water multiple times a day and even provided a fresh spring of Buddleia each day too! They did a lot of resting after their miraculous transformation and expelled all the excess meconium.
They were then ready to release! I waited for the warmest part of the day to release them and they were definitely ready to go. 2 of them flew straight out and were off in the direction of the nearest park! Then another flew out and stayed in the bushes for a while. The last 2 I took out on my hand and let them sit for a while before they flew away.
So now our butterflies have been released, it's the perfect time to say that I too will by flying away from HZ. Thank you so much for all your interest and support in my last post, it's been wonderful to share it with you all!
Lou 🦋
@Lou73 Wait, What? Where will you fly? How can you not still be interested in Science and Art and Beauty? Where are you going?
@Lou73 Lou the Butterfly, it's Pat the Cat. It's ok to disagree. It's also really good to refresh oneself, fly around a bit, try some oranges and honey, live on the wild side. Just remember your People. You are always Loved.
