Okay, picture time! Most of these are from Friday. I just hadn't gotten around to posting them, yet. I only took a few today because it was the usual suspects. Plus, it was cold!
So I walk into the lab and there's a Monarch on the floor. I wrangled him and put him in the flight cage.
Besides the floor, the first thing I do is check the chrysalis boxes to see who has emerged. You can see I had a few.
As I was releasing the butterflies, I noticed a dead Malachite. If they're in good shape, I take them to the classroom where we have a microscope hooked up to a monitor where people can look at them up close. When butterflies die a natural death, they tend to bend their wings a little and their legs fold up. Don't know why. Seems better than being eaten alive, though.
It was pretty cool so the butterflies were still just hanging out, like this Zebra Longwing.
And the Malachites.
The Polydamas was sitting on the screen...railing? What do you call those things?
This Zebra Longwing had a little bit of a messed up wing, but I gave it a chance.
Released a few Monarchs, including this male.
And I had one emerge in the lab! Look how thick the body is. That's because it's swollen with fluids.
Back in the lab, I was adding my Orange-Barred Sulphur cats to the tank and checked on my one chrysalis. I kept that one, though. More on him in a minute. You can tell it's going to be a male by the orange bar already visible.
And back in the flight cage, a Malachite finally showed me some green.
Today in the flight cage, I had three dead Polydamas. Natural causes, all of them. They went to the classroom to teach on in death. We've had them in the flight cage for a few weeks now so I like to think they lived a full life except they don't seem to be reproducing. I haven't found any eggs and we don't have any in the lab. The Monarchs and Zebra Longwings aren't reproducing much, either. I did find a few Monarch eggs. I wonder if the temperatures inhibit reproduction?
Well, anyway, here's a look at both sides of a Polydamas Swallowtail. Also called the "No Tail Swallowtail" and the "Gold Rim Swallowtail". I suppose you can see why.
Now, back to Mr. Orange-Barred Sulphur. He came out late this afternoon which means he's spending the night with me. I didn't think he had enough time to get warmed up before he could fly and I'm not taking chances. We're supposed to have nice weather for the foreseeable future, so he should enjoy tomorrow quite well. It's really hard to get these guys to open their wings, but I tried to show the orange bar across the top wings. Only males have those. Females only have the orange on the bottom wings along with a series of gray-black dots.
