Pupation of a Swallowtail in the wild

As well as the indoor Papilio machaon Swallowtails which I've been raising, I've been keeping an eye on the outside ones too. Of course they are not easy to find once they have pupated and I'm sure there must be lots of chrysalises hidden around the garden. I have spotted four of them now but it was only because they were still brightly coloured caterpillars in pre-pupation that I noticed them at all. This one here had chosen a Feverfew plant that I had already chopped back, right near the back door. I was able to keep an eye on it, but am still amazed that I caught the actual pupation. I noticed it was twitching rather a lot and thought pupation was imminent, so ran to get my brother who was staying with us, and got back just in time for us to watch this part of the metamorphosis. I feel very privileged for having seen this happen out in the wild as it's hard enough catching it happen with the indoor raised ones!

You can see how the skin is practically translucent by this point and the pupa inside is twitching, and then wriggling like crazy whilst it is squeezing that old caterpillar skin down itself. I love watching this happen and realising that those cute little legs and face are nothing but a spent shell to be discarded at the end of the process.

And we're about ready to burst!

Taken from a different angle so it looks like the chrysalis has moved! At first I wondered about those dark marks as I hadn't seen that before.

The old caterpillar skin which just gets flicked away.

Immediately afterwards you can see some of the butterfly features such as antennae, eyes and proboscis but this smooths out over the next hour as the chrysalis shape takes place and the outer skin hardens.

Here it is a while later and then I realised that this chrysalis was a dark form, hence those marks I showed earlier. I have three green ones outside which I'm keeping an eye on, and they all blend in perfectly with their surroundings and this dark one was very well camouflaged here. With my indoor ones I only got one solitary dark chrysalis, but seeing these guys in the wild you realise how important their camouflage is.

I'm sad to say there was no happy ending for this would-be butterfly and I'll tell you about the fate of this one, and feature the other wild ones, in a 'what these creatures face in real life' post, coming shortly.

In case you missed the video I made of an indoor Swallowtail pupating, here it is again. It makes sense of the photos above anyway.