How to grow your own butterflies

Painted Lady caterpillars arrived this morning in the post at preschool. children really excited already.

This is a verry good idea,however I must have missed some thing, where do you get them and approx cost.

My daughter Katherine (13) has carefully looked after 5 Painted Lady caterpillars. All 5 turned to chrysalis but one emerged this afternoon! I think from what we saw yesterday, that 2 more are changing now. It looks as though I can see 2 different parts of a wing! Katherine has been feeding with sugared water and brought in some garden flowers to the observatory.

We have hawkmoth caterpillars every year in a certain tree in the garden. Large green ones with a sort of spike at their tail. However, we kept 2 chrysalis last year which were lying in a large pot underneath the tree. We thought that they had died when we looked at them a few weeks ago - but low and behold we now have 2 hawkmoths which have emerged from them. What big and beautiful creatures they are! Wondered if anyone else has them? I'll put the photos of chrysalis and moth on flickr if anyone's interested.

It will be very interesting see the chrysalises become butterflies but how do those that lie underground hatch out? Many moth caterpillars (and some butterfly caterpillars) bury themselves before turning into the pupae stage. Do they break out underground as butterflies, which then wriggle to the surface before drying their wings, or do the chrysalises come to life and wriggle to the surface before hatching out as butterflies?

Is it acceptable to let birds eat your home grown butterflies?

Hello Springwatch,



Regarding Elephant Hawkmoths, at what stage does the caterpillar inside the chrysalis become liquid and then change into the moth?



Last summer there were 3 Elephant Hawkmoth caterpillars in the garden, I watched them change from small and green to large and brown, until they disappeared. This spring I found the chrysalis of one in a plant pot and kept it indoors until it emergered. In the garden, approx three days before, I was walking along flag stones with grass between the cracks when I heard a popping noise - i had unfortunately stood on another Hawkmoth chrysalis, all that was in it, and oozing out of it, was yellow/green liquid. The caseing of the one that hatched was papery and delicate, but the damaged one was very hard.



Kind regards,



Yvonne.

Hi peeps, loved your prog about butterflies. I try to encourage nettles in unsued sunny areas in my clients gardens. Butterflies wont lay eggs in more shaded areas. we try to help our lepid friends.

Just to update my comment from 12/06/12 - we released 2 Painted Lady butterflies this morning at about 7.45am before the children went to school as it is a lovely sunny day here. The 3rd butterfly was reluctant to leave and just stayed on my hand with her wings open in the breeze but made absolutely no attempt to fly off. We have returned her to the observatory and will check again later to see if she is keen to go. We still have 2 more chrysalis to hatch.

Wow! This is awesome. So much efforts to just take photographs!

i have been collecting cabbage white caterpillars for my grand daughter who is nearly two to show her the transformation of caterpillars to butterflies as i have done with all my children but i have never seen this before. two have gone to chrysalis form but two have actually given birth to more caterpillars or are they maggots from something that have used the caterpillar as a host.! can some one explain this