Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Black Swallowtail Instar - Hatch!

 
In a previous posting of mine titled, "Black Swallowtail Instars" from Wednesday, October 31, 2012, I talked about the Black Swallowtail caterpillars that we attracted to our parsley.
 
Anyway, I dug out a parsley plant in the fall before the frost killed it, potted it up and placed inside a 20-gallon fish tank.  I then pulled all the instars I could find and placed them on the parsley plants in the tank.  Added some branches for them to build there chrysalises on and store in the garage for the long cold winter.
 
Well, the dude pictured above was the first of the instar to hatch!  As you can see the parsley plant is long since dead but the chrysalises are still there.  A couple more to hatch then I can reclaim and clean my tank.
 
We let this dude go, who proceeded to fly off as though it's been flying for years.  Just hope he chooses to stick around and enjoy the flowers we have available now and the many, many to come.

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