Biology: First Flight of our Painted Ladies

Last Thursday, we released our newly minted butterflies into the big wide world!














The moment that we've all be waiting for...















On the down side, two of the four butterflies failed to take flight: the permanently crumpled one rested in the grass along side the butterfly whose wing had a crippling twist.  We left these two in the grass to whatever fate awaited them, as they were creatures if the wild.  We told the girls that the two butterflies would prefer the sunshine and soft grass over confines of a cage, but that they most likely destined to become Robin food within the hour...
 













The other two butterflies, once released, flew up immediately out of sight and our hopes for them soared as well. 

Biology: Metamorphosis! From Chrysalides to Painted Ladies

What a drama filled week it has already been for our for newly winged friends.  We started out with four pupa.

Monday morning - voila!  Our first butterfly. Then late Monday, we had another come mostly out of its Chrysalis. 

But Alas, tragedy - the second butterfly got stuck to a bunch of the caterpillar silk that had been attached to its Chrysalis by some of the other caterpillars.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the directions had stayed to clear away the silk before transferring the Chrysalides to the butterfly enclosure. 

After giving the butterfly a day and a half to figure out what it was doing, Erik finally decide to intervene with a pair of safety pins and was able to release the butterfly from the silk.  Unfortunately, by then its wings had already hardened without ever having been unfurled.  (The silks had bound his wings in.)  And so we found him this morning, having spent the night at the bottom of the cage, still twitching, but still crumpled up, unable to move wings or most of her/his legs (the ones which were tucked silk in the wings).

The last two remaining butterflies came out over night, last night.  One of them spent a good part of the day with its abdomen still stuck inside the Chrysalis.  Fortunately, it faired a bit better than pour crumpled butterfly.  It had it's wings unfurled.  However Erik did have to rescue it, again with the safety pins, and there is a pronounced twist to its wings - so it will have to compensate when flying.


We plan on releasing all three butterflies as soon as the weather permits.  Meanwhile, I jerry-rigged up small sugar-water filled glad-ware container with a construction paper flower, in hopes that the butterflies would sustain themselves on our meager offerings until conditions were favorable for flight.














One empty Chrysalis and three still occupied...




























Erik, using safety pins to help free the last stuck butterfly from it's chrysalis.
















The last two butterflies to emerge.

Biology: Our first Chrysalis!

We had been noticing that one of our Painted Lady caterpillars had been hanging upside down from the ceiling of their container for about a day.  It was hanging in the classical "j" shaped posture.  and this morning W checked on the caterpillars and sure enough, this was the first one to pupate.  Sooooo exciting!  We expect the rest will follow in the next couple of days.  They should emerge from their chevaliers within a week plus of pipetting.