Garden Delights Arts & Crafts
Unique Photo Arts by Heidi Rand

This gallery has photos of monarch butterflies, starting with the eggs that a butterfly lay on the milkweed plants in our garden on March 20, 2009. We left most of the eggs on the plants, but brought some inside. We will keep them until they hatch, then release them. Generally, the cycle from egg to butterfly takes about a month. The first caterpillar emerged from its egg on March 26th, and they had all emerged by the next day. See photos of the empty egg, and of the caterpillars. It's April 11th, and the caterpillars are about an inch long. George thinks they're at their third or fourth instar (that's the stage between sheds of their skin). The first caterpillar pupated (turned into a chrysalis) on April 18th. On May 1st the first set of chrysalises started to turn dark, and then their wings started showing through the chrysalis, which means they are getting ready to emerge (eclose). May 2nd, near midnight, the first butterfly emerges! Over the night to the morning of May 3rd, five of them emerged. The last two emerged on May 4th, and George released them during the day while I was at work because the weather improved. They were very ready to go, flying away immediately to the north rather than hanging around on the flowers we provided for them.

These photographs are relatively small so I could load them quickly. If you're interested in ordering copies, please email me at heidirand@aol.com, I will upload a larger file for you. If you have any comments of questions, please email me, I'd love to hear from you.