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Monday, September 3, 2012

Behold The Power of Parsley!

Notice how she's curling her butt up to affix an egg to the parsley leaf.
   
Black Swallowtail butterfly #2 stopped by a few nights ago and laid another half-dozen or so eggs on the parsley. Yippee! She was gorgeous! I already have seven caterpillars in my sunroom, pretty soon I may need another terrarium. I'm definitely gonna need more parsley...


She alternated between having a snack...


...then laying another egg...


...then snack, lay egg, snack, lay egg...


By the way, here's one of the caterpillars, this one's the biggest at around 1 cm long. 

6 comments:

  1. That caterpillar is 1 CUBIC METER LONG! Holy Mother of Pearl, that's unbelievable!!

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  2. You go, girl, butterfly ... you.

    A beautiful mom and a beautiful baby.

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  3. I am SO DAMN JEALOUS. I have parsley AND fennel AND dill AND golden alexander - but no caterpillars.

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  4. *Jeff- That's 1 chinese mile. (an actual official measure of length, 1 chinese mile=0.55 kilometers)

    No, of course it means centimeters.

    *Ellen- I guess this kinda makes me a surrogate grandma :-)

    *Jason- Don't be jealous, I just got lucky. You've still got time, I don't think they migrate, I think they over winter as a chrysalis, so you could get some egg layers anytime soon!

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  5. Nice! I rarely see Black Swallowtail adults, just the caterpillars (when we plant dill). I'm hoping to attract more with some Golden Alexanders.

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  6. Beutiful Pictures, I love the wildlife in the garden. I think it is proof positive of the healthy benefit of the efforts we make. I have to have some of that Caryopteris that I saw from one of your earlier posts!

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