A wild Swallowtail eclosing

Hello, it's me. You've probably forgotten me by now but I'll explain in another post. For now it's all about this Swallowtail who decided to pupate on my lavender. Going back a bit, about late April we had quite a few Swallowtails about laying eggs on the bronze fennel. There's a lot of fennel now as it self seeds with a vengeance. A good thing really, as about a month ago I counted upwards of twenty caterpillars and had to move some around onto stalks with plenty of foliage.

Moving forward a bit, I then found a caterpillar on a lavender plant round the side of the house. I knew it wasn't going to eat lavender (their host plants are carrot, wild carrot, fennel and dill) so it had to have chosen that place to pupate. Sure enough, the next morning there was a faint bit of silk spun around its head end holding it in place onto the stalk. This silk is called the hammock. 

I then went to England to see my Mum (had a great time with amazing weather, but if you are in England you know about the weather!). I really didn't expect to see a living chrysalis when I came back, as the time I studied this species' caterpillars in the wild, all out of four caterpillars or chrysalises died from disease, predators or parasitism, whereas my indoor raised ones all survived to become butterflies.

It took me a while to even find the chrysalis as it was so well camouflaged - it looks remarkably like a lavender leaf! I was so pleased to see it looking healthy. Then this morning I had a look and I could see the butterfly's wing patterns showing through the chrysalis and knew it wouldn't be long. I went outside again a few hours later and I'd just missed the eclosion by about 5 minutes! Its wings were still curled up like in the first photo. I didn't have my 'butterfly camera' to hand so by the time I'd fetched it the wings were looking straighter. Then the butterfly started unfurling and refurling its tongue (proboscis) which is in two parts when unfurled. I'm too lazy to google but I think when they first eclose they have to do something that makes those two parts stick together. Or something. You can google if it interests you! 

The following photos are taken with my Powershot SX50 which is ten times better for macros/close ups than my more expensive Lumix which took the photo above!

See the end of the proboscis in two parts?

Here's the chrysalis - the top end is where the butterfly comes out, and the dark bit at the other end is the liquid that the butterfly ejects when it ecloses. Again, I can't remember all the details about that so it's another thing you can google!

This afternoon I have also seen a Large Skipper, a large Fritillary of some sort, two Map butterflies and a Kingfisher, and there's an absolute explosion of various kinds of blue damselflies around the pond. A second brood of Blue Tits have fledged and their "pee pee pee" sound is loud but cute. All very pleasant indeed.

It's a tough life for the outdoor Swallowtails

* Warning - this post contains some gruesome photos of
predation and parasitism! *

I have been watching four Papilio machaon Swallowtail chrysalises that I discovered outside whilst still caterpillars in pre-pupation. Some pretty horrible things happened to them!

But before I get to that, let's look at some caterpillars and their unpleasant demise. I found six of them dead with what looked like a sort of sooty mould on their bodies. I've researched and cannot find what it is. This didn't stop other bugs from checking them out, although I can't be sure they actually fed on the dead caterpillar because I wouldn't have thought it was entirely healthy to do so!

Bug nymphs checking out and possibly feeding on the dead caterpillar.
Note that little wasp on the right - that has significance later on in this story!

Here's another one I found hanging from a fennel stalk.
Some ants and bug nymphs checking it out.

An ant looking into what I think is a mouldy bit....
and see how deflated the caterpillar looks too.

Now chrysalises - remember the one that I got to witness pupating a couple of posts back? Unfortunately this is what I found happening the following morning. It made me sick to the stomach to see this after having watched the pupation as I felt closer to it because of that. I shouldn't attach human emotion to it but I couldn't help it. Ants have to eat too but it just seemed so unfair ..... and ugh!

This poor fresh chrysalis didn't stand a chance with a load of ants swarming over it.
After pupation you can see that the inside of the chrysalis is just yellow goo at this point.

Going back to the first chrysalis that I found, I just couldn't believe (1) how I even noticed it and (2) why it chose this spot to pupate in. I had bunged a pot containing Ophiopogon planiscapus 'nigrescens' by my potting shed as it was full of weeds and needed repotting. However I haven't had a chance to do that yet.....

You would never have known.....but there it is in the photo on the right.

Now we get on to the subject of parasitism. I did a little research after taking photos of these wasps and discovered an American site (link given later) which gave me a lot of very interesting info on Chalcid wasps. Somehow they are quick to discover the caterpillar in pre-pupation and hang around waiting for it to pupate, then lay their eggs in the still soft chrysalis. The poor caterpillar and freshly pupated chrysalis twitch a lot trying to dislodge the wasps but it's futile. Chalcid wasps by the way are supposed to be a gardener's friend and are used in biological control, as they keep down numbers of the less desirable Lepidoptera species. And the desirable ones too!  

No sooner had it settled down to pupate, the wasps arrived.
I don't know the ID of the larger one with the long antennae
but I later found out the smaller ones are Chalcid wasps.

Then blow me down if another caterpillar decided to pupate in the same plant pot! On this one I only spied the larger unknown wasp and a Red Velvet Mite. I'm not sure what is happening with this chrysalis, as 19 days later nothing has emerged and whilst it has a dark mark on one side, it doesn't show the tell-tale signs that it has been parasitised by Chalcid wasps. Maybe the other kind of wasp will hatch out of it!

Another chysalis in the same pot - still waiting to see what happens to it!
But I don't think there's a butterfly forming inside.

And here's the 4th one I found which also has a Chalcid wasp on it, and some days later
as you can see on the right, part of the body of the chrysalis turned a strange brown colour.
Since I took this photo it also shows the tell-tale signs that it's been parasitised by a Chalcid wasp.

And what are these markings? I got this info from this very interesting site which although it is talking about Black Swallowtails, they have very similar chrysalises and I could see the same thing happening to this species. It's the dark markings that you see below, and far less obvious, a change in the shape of the lower abdomen. Far more info about this in the link above.

The membrane between these segments turns darker
which is the giveaway that it's been parasitised.

Because I keep an eye on them regularly I was lucky to get to watch some of the little wasps hatch out of the first chrysalis!

Left: A Chalcid wasp is actually stuck in the exit hole!
However the wasps had made another hole on the other side.

Here's one just emerging.

Still emerging but note that sticky stuff in the right hand picture.

The poor thing got stuck - seemed its leg was stuck on
the remnants of the sticky stuff I mentioned above.
I was kind and got a blade of grass and helped it off!

So out of four chrysalises, one got eaten by ants, two were parasitised by Chalcid wasps and the last one I'm still waiting to see what happens, but I don't think a butterfly is going to emerge as it's well over due and I haven't seen any signs of life from the chrysalis. They will often twitch if you breath on them or tickle them with something like a blade of grass. A bit of a shame as I'd hoped to be able to say "ta-da, here's one that made it", against all the odds. But the other day whilst doing some deadheading guess what I found in the Valerian that had flopped over into the grass? It certainly doesn't look like any parasites emerged.....

Hopefully an adult Papilio machaon managed to eclose. It certainly looks like it although
I also note brown markings between the segments. I hope this is just staining from
the pupal fluid that is expelled upon eclosion.

I do appreciate that all that I've documented above is quite normal in the insect world. Numbers have to be kept in check and predation and parasitism is common place. It's just a real eye-opener when you get to witness it all first hand and now makes me want to cheer for every adult butterfly that I see as I know so many didn't make it! 

As for my indoor raised Swallowtails, out of a total of 42, two failed to eclose and one sustained a wing injury whilst wildly flapping prior to putting it outside, so it had to be put down. So I've released 39 healthy adults into the wild but have yet to see signs of any having returned to lay eggs here - probably a good thing as I don't want to be tempted any more! But it has been a great learning curve to also study what happens to them in real life and note how different it is when they are raised indoors with no predators and seemingly, no disease either.

It's been a wonderful experience and I've learned tons more about them this year but I'm not planning on raising them every year. I'm still searching in the stinging nettles in the hope of finding some caterpillars belonging to one of the more common species - here's hoping I'll find some one day!

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.

Raising Swallowtails - Part 11 - Video of a Pupation

I thought Part 10 would be the end of this series but then I thought I'd see if I could get a video of one of my caterpillars pupating. I've missed nearly all of them doing it but one day I noticed one of them twitching and wriggling a bit, so decided to set up my makeshift studio (lots of kitchen paper and blue tack) and set my camera video running, just in case. 

Well the twitching went on for a long time so my Cybershot batteries were running low and I switched to my Powershot SX50, which just about fitted OK on the mini tripod although it sagged a bit. But it annoyingly kept turning itself off every 16 minutes, so I had an egg timer in my pocket set to 15 mins so I could keep running to check and reset it filming!

At this point a friend on facebook who has the same camera told me how to switch the auto power down setting to off, but as I went downstairs to reset the camera, guess what started happening? Luckily there was enough time before the camera turned itself off to capture the whole pupation, and then I reset it to film some more over a period of time. So with the help of my OH and his Mac software, 'we' have edited this little film to show the pupation and how the newly formed chrysalis goes about changing afterwards into the shape that it stays like until a butterfly emerges from it, about 11 to 16 days later.

So with thanks to (another) friend who mentioned that I could make the video appear bigger here rather than the automatic small size it comes in at when linking to Youtube here it is .... and if you are reading this via an email subscription, you will not see this video so you will have to come direct to the blog to view it.

I'm onto the second batch of caterpillars/chrysalises now and am glad I'm not coming across more tiny caterpillars outside, as food is getting a bit low! There are already quite a few large caterpillars outside on the dill and fennel, and we've now found three of them settled down in pre-pupation outside. Two were in completely inappropriate places so had to be brought inside and the third I am keeping an eye on outside to see what happens so more about that in a later post..... I can already see that life is tough for the outdoor ones compared to my pampered indoor pets. 

Of the two we found outside and brought in, one had decided that a nice yellow string lying flat on the ground was a good place to pupate! In an effort to try to tidy up in the aftermath of the septic tank installation, we had strung a line to try to redefine lawn and gravel drive and started edging after the ground was softened by recent rain. Thankfully that caterpillar hadn't yet made its cradle so was brought indoors where it quickly settled down and pupated! One thing I noticed by bringing it indoors is how much more green it was than my indoor raised caterpillars - and in fact of the indoor ones, the dill fed caterpillars are more green than the fennel fed ones. 

Outdoor caterpillar comes in and shows its Ringo face (butt end!) one last time before pupating.

The other one was on a woody weed stem which had to be taken out; this was at the edge of my gravel drive but the ground levels had changed since the pipework had been laid and I was waiting until after my houseleeks had flowered before having to remove them (and the weeds!). That one is now indoors too, on its weed stem.

Something that I have only recently learned is how to sex the Swallowtail butterfly. As male and female are pretty much identical in markings I hadn't realised until after some research that there is a difference.... males have claspers at the end of their abdomen which they use to grab the female whilst mating. It's not very apparent or easy to see as the claspers are usually held together, but it seems to me that the female has a more flat end to her abdomen, which seems to be fatter as well, whilst the male is slimmer and has a pointy end. So I think in the last batch there were far more males than females, which is a good thing given there are only limited food resources round here, and I don't want them laying eggs on the neighbours' carrot leaves and being considered as pests!

I shared this before but now realise this is a male, as you can clearly see the claspers
(pointy bits) at the end of the abdomen.

Lastly, and I know this is a disjointed post, but this is what comes of having shared stuff on facebook then realising I hadn't done so here, here are some pics of one of the caterpillars making its cradle. Before taking the photos I had never really thought about how they did this, but having watched for a while on a rainy afternoon they actually spend a fair amount of time repetitively making silk threads and weaving them from side to side, so the cradle is made up of many threads. It is very tough stuff as after they've eclosed I have to pull off the chrysalis shell and some of this silk from the mesh lid that they are so fond of and the threads get left behind. I still can't see exactly what is going on so I might have to make a video, although it would have to be speeded up somewhat! :-)

By the way, these shots were all taken one handed as I was having to hold up the mesh lid to get at the caterpillar. You can see what I'm talking about better in the final photo. 

It was a bit of a slow process.

Quite a lot of silk strands are made to form this cradle.

Photobombed!

The new cradle showing multiple strands - it is visible just behind the third true leg
(front pointy legs) and what you see to the right is old silk from a previous cradle.

Oh and one more just showing how this lot decided it would be fun to group up, and what
a nuisance it is for me with them on the mesh as I can't easily photograph anything
going on here, let alone video it! So few of them use the sticks I provide.

Raising Swallowtails - Part 10 - The Eclosion!

With 13 chrysalises I hoped I'd get to witness at least one eclosion, but after having missed the first two by maybe just a minute or two it was time to do something about it. I knew the third one was imminent as it was already showing signs of wing colouration through the chrysalis skin and luckily it was one of the few on a stick, so I could take it out of the box. The rest are irritatingly hanging off the mesh lid or on the sides of the plastic box.

So with thanks to my friend Marianne who told me to just set up a camera and leave the video running, but also set a timer to remind me every 15 mins or so to check on it, I duly set to work. Luckily my OH had a mini tripod that was perfect for my old Cybershot. Out came the blue tack to fix the stick in place - as I needed light for the video I stuck the top of the stick to the window frame. Then the background looked naff so my OH got some kitchen paper and we blue tacked that in place to make this makeshift studio!

My studio.

After running two batteries flat that afternoon/early evening I was pretty sure it would be eclosing around 8am the following day as that seems a popular time with these butterflies. So I set the video but also decided to sit in the kitchen waiting and watching.... when suddenly I noticed the chrysalis had just started to split. I grabbed my camera and took photos too (you'll notice my flash going off in the video but that can't be helped).

So here it is, it doesn't last long and you can view it full screen with reasonable quality, but there isn't a medium size option, unfortunately. (P.S. I have reloaded this with added music and taken out the original sound track of me stomping about the kitchen and the noise of my flash going off!)

Aaargh the darn thing climbed straight upwards and up the window frame! I had imagined it would dangle from the chrysalis for a while which is why I set the camera in a position that would show that. Well I'll know next time. :-)

Note the browny-red liquid that the butterfly excreted as it was eclosing. This is pupal fluid although last year's ones managed to do it outside of the chrysalis; this year's are obviously tidy beasts.

So here are the photos I took at the same time as the videos, and would you believe that just after the final shot shown here the batteries died in my Speedlite! But it didn't matter as I've plenty of photos from that stage onwards from the other butterflies.

Climbing up the window frame.

This was the only salvageable bit of the rest of the video which started with the eclosion - a few seconds where it sticks its proboscis out and has a good old wiggle. I had grabbed the camera, tripod and all, to try to film some more but managed to get most of it out of focus!

Here are a few photos from the first Swallowtail to eclose that I must have just missed by a minute or two, judging by how crumpled up its wings are. These start to smooth out very quickly after eclosion.

Freshly eclosed and climbing up the stick towards the chrysalis that featured in my video.

Hugging its sibling!

I left this one in the box for a while, usually I put them on a pot plant but it seemed
perfectly happy hanging off the chrysalises and getting its wings in working order!

Here's a not very good video of one of them flapping its wings to pump 'blood' (called hemolymph) into them and also exercising its proboscis a bit. 

My African Violet makes a handy place for them to hang from
until they are ready to go outside.

You get nicer photo ops with flowers in the background.

And here's one from last year when it was released. I already took dozens of photos of them last year when I set them free. My first two this year flew off straight away and the third sat on a flower for a while.

It's a really wonderful feeling releasing these beautiful creatures that you've raised yourself.

Well there you have it, over these 10 posts I think I have pretty much covered everything involved in the whole life cycle of these butterflies, but if there's an opportunity to video a pupation.... well I'll see how I go with the next batch!

The previous post showing photos of a pupation are here in Part 9, if you missed it.