Eastern Black Swallowtails Everywhere

In The beginning of July Mamma Black Swallowtail finally found my Fennel plants. I keep them in a pot right next to the screen door of my lanai so I can spot the caterpillar babies. I use to pick the leaves that had the eggs on them and put them in water and watch the eggs hatch.  That was fine except my fennel wasn't growing fast enough to keep up and I ended up with hardly any fennel. So at the end of last summer I decided to leave the caterpillars on the fennel until they got a little big then remove them into my cage and then feed them parsley instead. Most caterpillars have 1 specific plant or 2  that is their host plant, meaning it is the only thing they will eat. Luckily Black Swallowtails will eat parsley, fennel, wild carrot & dill.  So although I grow parsley too it is not nearly enough to feed these voracious eaters! But it is easy to buy at the grocery store :)
 I ended up with 17 caterpillars from that batch and out of those 14 have made it and have been released out into the world!
 Here are some pictures of them in various stages. 
This just shows how many caterpillers I had  in my cage. They are pretty big already here.

This next picture shows the difference in them. The darker one is still a baby. They start out brown looking with a white stripe running across the middle.

This next one is a little bigger and you can see his color change again.

When they feel threatened by a predator these little orange horns pop out which also emits a stinky scent .  I purposely pet him to make this happen for the picture. It really is kind of cute!

In all of the years I have been raising butterflies I hardly ever catch them hatching out of their chrysalis. While I was taking pictures of a few newly hatched butterflies I noticed a little head popping out!

And here he is fully out of his chrysalis. Notice how small his wings are. I can't believe they fit in such a little space all folded up! He will hang from the top of the cage and you can see his wings straighten out and dry. It takes about an hour or so.

And finally he is a beautiful butterfly ready to go into the world!

This one is a male . Males have more yellow spots on their wings

And below is a female. The females have more blue in their wings

I hope you enjoyed my black swallowtail pictures! My cage is empty right now but I am happy to say that Mamma Black swallowtail has been around the past few days laying eggs again on my fennel! In a couple of days I will have more babies!

Thank you for reading my blog!

Have a great day!