last year a bunch of my photographer friends were making these really cool butterfly aquariums. They would just catch caterpillars out in their yards and then make them comfy little homes inside a fish tank or similar enclosure filled with flowers and leaves. I thought Simon would love this so I went hunting for a caterpillar. TO my surprise it actually wasn’t that hard to find one, there was one right on our trampoline netting. After capturing it I went inside to look it up and find out what it ate. To my hoar it turned out to be a tent caterpillar which according to the WSU extension are “a serious nuisance in western Washington” So scrap that plan… So this year when the butterfly garden kits appeared in all the stores I bought one. And we sent off for our caterpillar larvae which then arrived in the mail. We watched the caterpillars eat and eat and eat and grow and grow and grow until the finally got so fat that they climbed to the top of their little container and spun their cocoons. After they hatched (emerged?) we released them and these are the photos from that day.
these are painted lady butterflies and I found their lack of color rather disappointing. I would really like to do this project again another verity of butterfly but so far I can only find painted lady butterfly larvae for sale so I guess my only option is back to looking for native species…
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Perfection. Just absolutely perfect. Thank you for sharing.