Our Butterfly Project

Nana got us a "send away for caterpillars" kit some months ago
and we finally got around to it.
It was a bit strange to receive baby caterpillars in the mail, but Sadie has been very excited about it since the get-go. These little buggers ate and ate and ate and got bigger quickly. We've been marveling at their growth for about 10 days now. A few days ago they made their way up to the top of the cup and began to form their chyrsalises.

8/14/10

Today we transferred the little guys (or gals) from the plastic cup into their "butterfly house".
We gathered some twigs so that the butterflies can land on them when they emerge. One fell during the transfer & likely won't be able to continue it's metamorphosis, but there are 5 still clinging to the paper, so - fingers crossed.

I guess I'll just add photos as we go.

Success! Our first one emerged:

All 6 survived - even the one that fell during the transfer. Amazing. I kept hoping we'd catch one in the act of emerging from it's chrysalis, but we never did. Here you can see 5 of the 6 - one is hard to make out; it's on the right of the cage under the curved twig. They are Painted Lady butterflies. Sadie has named them Leslie, Fizzy, Wa-Wa, Ursula, Bella and Tink.

8/24/10

I've been putting sugar water in a little dish for them but I'm not sure they are all eating from it, so I think we need to let them loose soon. Maybe I'll try to get video of that...