Beautiful Black Swallowtail Born!

           Tuesday morning, before 8 AM, a perfect male Black Swallowtail finally emerged from its chrysalis on the Black-Eyed Susan. In the photo above, it is newly emerged from the chrysalis, which is the chartreuse casing backlit below the spent flower on which the butterfly rests. At this point, the swallowtail is still merging the two halves of its proboscis, and is pumping fluid from its abdomen to its wings. 
            The day before, the chrysalis has become transparent, revealing the butterfly tightly packed inside (below). We spent much of the day staking it out in hopes of photographing the actual eclosure, but it evidently wasn't ready. Then the next day it popped out before we got there. Grrr. Next year, maybe we will catch that moment. 

            Black Swallowtails don't hang around as long as a Monarch does after "birth." It dries its wings more quickly and leaves the garden to feed. This lovely specimen climbed to the top of its flower stalk, then flew down a few inches to spread its wings one more time while resting on some leaves. With no more flight-testing than that, it was gone by a couple minutes after 10 AM. 

          Meanwhile, over in the milkweed patch, we know of 5-6 tiny Monarch caterpillars that have emerged safely from their eggs, including Frannie (below) and Laddie, who is the first to reach second instar and who has successfully transferred from its cut stem to a lovely potted milkweed from the Rustic Greenhouse. 

           We have seen this go-around that the first minutes and hours are more dangerous than we knew. One newly-emerged little fella was killed by an unknown competitor but not eaten, and another (below) expired when it could not successfully exit its egg. Poor thing. We will be keeping an eye on the rest, but they are hard to spot and harder to track, so our plan is to monitor loosely and track more carefully when they increase in size to third stage. 

              Although butterfly activity in general is beginning to ease, and the garden itself transitioning to fall chaos, we are still blessed with beautiful visitors and impish comedians and small dark strangers this week, The iridescent blue Pipevine Swallowtail is a shiny and gorgeous butterfly, especially in a landscape of marigolds and penta. 

            Even a tiny skipper has to put a leg out to steady itself when trying to perch on the very tip of a small leaf. One has to wonder if those orange antennae also serve as stabilizers in flight (probably not, but there is a guy at Sewanee doing super slow-mo on birds in flight whom we can try to convince to take on these fliers). 

               On the opposite end of the vivid to drab spectrum, there is still action, albeit in monochrome, The Carolina Satyr below is absorbing minerals from the mud after a rain. 

              Returning to the Monarch caterpillars, we are excited and anxious. Many dangers over several weeks need to be overcome before even one flies on towards their winter grounds in Mexico. Let's finish this post with a look back at the two females that found us on successive days last week, one of them despite her broken wing. We will do our best to help their offspring carry on.