Helen's Butterfly

I don't post a lot about what my daughter Helen is up to, but this I just have to share.

Helen received a bug vacuum and bug habitat for her 4th birthday from her Uncle Steve. Helen loves to collect bugs. A few weeks ago Helen found two monarch caterpillars in our yard and decided to keep them. Every other day we would go out to our hedge and pick fresh milkweed leaves for the caterpillars. It was really neat to watch them eat, and they ate a lot! On September 10th Helen's largest caterpillar began to turn into a chrysallis. It attached itself to the top of her bug habitat and formed a J.

By the next morning it was inside the chrysallis.

    

Then this morning we woke up to find this.

Around noon the butterfly came out of the chrysallis.

 

Then by about 2pm it was getting ready to fly. It opened and closed it wings for a while. We were finally able to find out if Helen's butterfly was male or female - it's a boy! You can tell because males have the two little black dots on the bottom set of wings. Also there are some liquid droplets just below the butterfly in this image - that is from its wings.

 

So it flew around a bit, but really was not very good at flying yet. It also did a lot of resting. Helen held the butterfly on her hand for at least a half an hour.

And then she let the butterfly hang out on the sunflower she helped grow.

Finally she decided to leave it on some flowers.

 

Comments

[Lisa M]

Wow, very cool and great pictures to capture the events.

[Bonnie]

That was AWESOME! Thanks for sharing.

[Kim Hoffmann]

That is some documentary you and Helen have created! Very ice!

[Kim Hoffmann]

I mean nice... very Nice. LOL

[John Jones]

That is super cool. Way to go, Helen! Thos photos are awesome too!

[Maargaret Finley]

Thanks for letting me be part of your experience with the butterfly. Love, Granny