Saturday, January 01, 2011

Butterfly overload

But I had to say as I mentioned it in the previous post. 
We had a visitor this morning!

She came to the swan plant to lay her eggs. I couldn't get nearly as close to her because I was worried I'd scare her away! But she'd lay an egg, fly away, come back, lay another one, fly away, come back etc etc. she did this for quite a while, it was lovely. Unfortunately there was a wasp kicking around so I'm not too sure how many of the eggs will survive but hopefully some of them will. It was really cool to watch.
It was suggested I could bring a branch into the house so I can watch the stages as they happen without predators getting at it so I think I'd like to give that a try.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

Happy New Year, everyone!!

9 comments:

  1. Beautiful pictures. What kind of camera do you have?

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  2. Marjon (Hawke's Bay)12:47 pm

    Hi Laura,

    Aren't they just beautiful? We had a couple of swan plants a few years ago and were thrilled to see all the eggs and resulting caterpillars. It became a bit distressing though when they turned out to be voracious feeders and stripped the plants bare within days! We ended up having to make a few tough decisions, and I vowed next time we'd have some spare plants growing under netting (so no eggs could be laid on them) as back up feed.

    You might like these two links: The Monarch Butterfly NZ Trust website (lots of good info):
    http://www.monarch.org.nz/monarch/

    and a post by a fellow kiwi blogger on their monarch experience:
    http://teatodtoad.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/12/a-precious-string.html

    Happy New Year! (Did you have a tall, dark and handsome first footer? We're not scottish, but we love the Broons :o)

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  3. Christine I've got a canon DSLR but it's the lens I use for the close ups - I treated myself to a macro lens last year and I love it!

    Marjon, I had a look at the links - they're fab - I love the string of crysalis - amazing :)

    I had my hubby as a first fit!

    We got the Broons/Oor Wullie every year - I think my family have the books going back to the 1960's!!

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  4. That is sooooo cool. We've had swan plants in pots inside the house before and it was so cool watching the caterpillars and the whole process until they became butterflies. And yes, make sure you have backup feed for them (or squash some eggs) because we had 5 caterpillars and they demolished 3 swan plants and stripped it off all its leaves.

    http://whitesinnz.blogspot.com/2009/01/to-witness-something-magical.html

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  5. National Geographic better watch out. Great photography!

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  6. Hi Laura, Happy New Year to you ...
    My children did this at kindy, the teacher bought the chrysalis inside on a branch, and the children watched and watched....as soon as there was movement of the butterfuly emerging after how ever many days, cant remember, and its wings were dry, they had a lettiing go ceremony outside...talk about beautiful and a great lesson in letting creatures be free....

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  7. Happy New Year Laura!

    I love Monarchs. We had three huge swan plants for about three years, then they got totally destroyed not by Monarchs but by this horrible white fungus. And course I couldn't spray them :(

    So two new plants this year..they're only tiny but the Monarchs have found them already. Hours of fun with the macro lens once the caterpillars start hatching

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  8. Happy New Year Laura!

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  9. Those are great pics! In 4th grade we had a glass case (with a mesh top) so we could watch how a monarch butterfly forms from the eggs.It was great!
    Happy New Year from New Hampshire!

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I love it when you leave me comments, it lets me know there are folk out there reading my ramblings! Thank you, I appreciate them loads and loads
Laura x