Emerged earlier than expected!

Hello everyone,

One of my black swallowtails emerged from the chrysalis this morning, after only a week and half, maybe less! I thought it took a couple of weeks.

Here's a pic shortly after she emerged (she's a she!).

Mark

Here's a pic with her wings open. When she flew out of the cage, she went up quite high and then landed somewhere up in one of my neighbor's trees.

Mark

She is beautiful! Tell me about the screen on your cage. How big (small?) are the openings?

I got the screen at Home Depot. I think they called it insect screen. It's the fiberglass? type, not metal. The holes are about 1/16 of an inch.

The nice thing about these newly emerged flutterbys is that they still so you can take their picture LOL!
I couldn't tell you how many blurry flutterby pics I've taken in the backyard!

Mark

Thanks, what size is your cage?

John

Hi John,

My cage is 5 feet high, 3 feet wide, and 1.5 feet deep.

I think I had a return visit this afernoon. Can't be sure, but this is a female black swallowtail. I snapped 8 pics, and this was the only decent one!

Mark

And, decent it is! Does that screen allow picture taking or do you have to get the camera inside?

Hi John,

I can take pics through the screen, but they don't look that good. The 2 pics above were taken with the door of the cage open, in the first couple of hours after the butterfly emerged. They stay relatively still in the first couple of hours, and they don't seem to be ready to fly until after a few hours, so I was able to get some good pics. In the second pic, I taped a piece of white paper to the outside of the cage, and used the fill flash only (the cage is under a covered patio, and the scene had strong backlighting). It worked better than I expected.

I was comparing my pics, and I think the one in the backyard today was a different one. The markings are slightly different.

Mark

Mark, I did the very same thing. Compared markings, and they appear to be different, but both very beautiful :)

Thanks PiggyPoo,

My second BST emerged Tuesday morning. For some reason kept climbing on the water tray that I put under my orange tree as a moat to keep ants away from the chrysalises. It fell into the moat a couple of times, and after the second time, I just put my fingers beneath it, and lifted it out. Then I put it on a pentas that I had put in the cage, and I was able to get a decent pic.

Here's a pic of it on the water tray. It's another female.

Mark

Here's a pic of her on the pentas.

Mark

Have you tried raising breeding pairs, Mark? Or, is that even feasible?

John

Hi John,

No I haven't tried that, and I really don't think its feasible. I wouldn't want to keep the butterflies confined anyway. I think their natural territorial ranges must be reasonably large, maybe a half square mile or more. The reason I started doing this in the first place was to increase the butterfly action in my backyard, so I would have something to take pictures of. On a normal day in spring and early/mid summer, I can be in the backyard a couple of hours or more before a swallowtail comes by. So any increase in the local population would help. There are people who raise butterflies for wedding releases and for sale as insect specimens, but I don't know if they keep breeding pairs or not.

Mark