Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly emerges (time-lapse)

[tiambva]

Much appreciated! I think we'll try the wrap & girder method you suggested. Thanks! Meanwhile, a monarch's floating around our garden, madly laying on every species of milkweed we have . . . gotta run!

[tiambva]

Great video! Any advice on how to hang pipevine chrysalises? Two of our larvae decided to pupate lying down, sigh. (I know several ways to handle monarch chysalises, but those have handy cremasters sticking out!) Your video shows clearly that I'd better hang these guys heads UP. Any idea?

[jcmegabyte]

I think you would be safe hanging them upside down by their cremasters if you have some spare silk to cotton to attach them to. In general, Swallowtails like to suspend themselves upright, but I have seen them attach horizontally and slightly head-down too without any trouble.

I have also wrapped them carefully/loosely in piece of paper towel with the head end slghtly exposed, then attached THAT to a substrate in an upright position. That works well, too :-)

[UtahMike41]

Mother nature is amazing. She brings us killer tornadoes and peaceful butterflies at the same time. Watching a caterpillar change into a butterfly is one of the most amazing things ever.

[jcmegabyte]

Life is sure a mish-mash of good and bad, isn't it? indeed, watching lepidoptera life cycles is a great way to get an up close view of some of nature's most amazing events! Thanks so much for watcing and commenting :-)

[UtahMike41]

It sure is. I caught a caterpillar and put it in a jar just to see what kind of butterfly it would turn into. It turned into a Western Tiger Swallowtail. It was beautiful. As soon as it was able to fly I let it go. Made me sad to watch it fly away knowing that I would never see it again.

[username1105]

how much time really passed?

[jcmegabyte]

About 25-30 minutes to emerge and full expand the wings. It takes another couple of hours for the wing veins to harden enough for the butterfly to fly properly. :-)

[rayywang]

Do you collect your leps from the wild or acquire them from other enthusiasts? I'd be interested in raising some cats if you don't mind (OC area)

[jcmegabyte]

I do both :-) However, these Battus were sent to me by a friend in northern CA as pupae. When they emerged I managed to hand-pair a couple of them and video the subsequent brood. Otherwise, they are very rare in southern CA, or at least in Santa Clarita.

[lightnings4life]

its cool how the wings expand liek that

[MariaJBogaerts]

Hi,

Read your comment to two of my videos (Red Admiral and Small Copper) and got curious about your films. I'm impressed! How does one make time lapse sequences as these??? Would like to do that myself one day ... My most spectacular butterfly video by the way is about the wooing, mating and egg-depositing of the hornet moth in Vlindertuin Waalre. Happened under the nose of some 10 volunteers. Have a look yourself!

Regards,

Maria Jonker

[jcmegabyte]

Thanks for the nice comment. I use a DV camcorder for the realtime footage. Then I capture frames (every 1 second) from the tape to the PC via IEEE 1394 Firewire. I delete the unwanted frames, then assemble them into a movie clip (using JPGVIDEO.EXE). Finally, I use Windows Movie Maker to assemble the video clips, stills, titles and my original music compositions into the final movie. The technology is fairly basic and routine, really. The bugs are far more interesting!

[Cheesemonkey118]

Awesome =D I used to keep butterflies too I love watching them hatch =)

[wiley207]

The chrysalis in that video looks like Metapod from "Pokemon."

[jcmegabyte]

That's probably no accident - I think the pokemon morphing thing is loosely based on insects. :-)

[barnonhill]

This is really nice, do you do this for a hobby? or do you get paid to do this? I got your info from a Butterfly walk in Los Osos CA (just So of Morro Bay on the estuary). Susan

[jcmegabyte]

I've been doing the butterfly and moth thing for about 35 years - a sort of life-long hobby. I'm afraid there's no money in it, but I hope to market high quality DVD versions of my video work as low-cost educational documentaries in the near future. In the meantime, enjoy!