Raising Swallowtails - Part 8

So the previous post I got up to Stage 5 so this is Stage 6 onwards. I now know that Stage 6 is the last but one instar, no. 4. And by the way guess who has six more tiny caterpillars added to her flock? Well they keep coming in on fennel which I'm picking for my babies, or I'm finding them on the yellowing leaves at the bottom of the plants and I'm sure they are too small to walk all the way up to another fennel frond, that'd be like 100 miles for them!

Here I have a Stage 5 (right) and a Stage 6.

I was lucky enough to notice one of the caterpillars in the middle of a moult, so grabbed my camera!

Turning into Stage 6 (Instar 4).

Here you can clearly see the head capsule still on the head,
which is always very pale just after a moult.

Still wearing the head capsule.

Now the capsule is just attached by a bit of web and the moulted skin at the side.

From the outside of the bowl you can see that the caterpillar has attached itself to it
with fine webbing before having a moult.

Here it is a while later showing how it has lost the 'bird dropping' white marking now.

And a view of the rear end.

Stage 8 or rather Instar 5 which is the final stage before pupating. During this period the caterpillar grows enormously. Obviously by this time they are a lot easier to photograph and on June 2nd my three largest ones all moulted so kept me busy watching and shooting!

Stage 8 just moments after a moult - at this point the face is very pale but darkens up within
about an hour. You can see the head capsule with the familiar Swallowtail facial markings
in the right hand corner. You can see the ocelli (simple eyes) a lot clearer as well.

June 2nd - this is another one after a moult and the facial markings are just visible now.

A few minutes later and the colouring is even darker, and the head capsule is still next to it.

4th June and much bigger and showing their beautiful colours now.

6th June and the 4th caterpillar reaches Stage 8/Instar 5. Here it is eating its moulted skin.
You can see the difference in size between one which was at that stage four days previously!
Also note size of bigger caterpillar's frass (poo) compared to the smaller one's head capsule!

Photo shoot time.

Excuse me would you stop eating just for a moment as I'm trying to measure you!

One thing I've learned about caterpillars, they either eat and poo like crazy,
or do absolutely nothing. Sometimes they don't move for 2 days before a moult.

Finally, pupation draws near when they go on walkabout. Just before the pupation process the caterpillar does what I call 'watery frass', a liquid poo presumably purging themselves before the long period of metamorphosis. They then feel the need to wander off because they are looking for a place to pupate in. At this point I have to get them into the big box with a mesh lid. There are now three in there (I found the second one on my magnifying glass, just as I was picking it up to look at the first one!!), two of which are firmly attached to a stick with their silk cradle and will probably be chrysalises by this evening.

Up the wall is a lot less dangerous than across the floor, which I've seen before!

I think I saw their mummy out of the kitchen window yesterday whilst I was making strawberry jam and had to nip out to take a few pics. There's no way to tell if it is male or female and it was very tatty and at the end of its days, however there are a lot of fresh eggs suddenly on the bronze fennel! 

Very tatty Swallowtail (Papilio machaon) with a good amount of hindwing missing.

It was just clinging to the Valerian.

Though when I gingerly put a finger up to it, it flew away as it wasn't having any of that!

OK the rest of what happens is already documented in these posts so I don't need to keep taking photos.... or do I? :-)

Links to all the previous posts re. raising Swallowtails:

Part 1 - 2012 - introducing my caterpillars and learning a lot about them.
Part 2 - the start of the pupation process.
Part 3 - lots of chrysalises forming but I never actually witnessed one.
Part 4 - the one in which I finally managed to see and photograph a caterpillar turning into a chrysalis.
Part 5 - 2013 - the following spring and what happened to my overwintered chrysalises.
Part 6 - finding more caterpillars and getting through to the butterfly stage.
Part 7 - 2014 - from egg to caterpillar (the most recent post).

I have one more thing to witness .... an eclosion! If you read Part 6 you'll know how long I spent watching and how many frustrations I had last year.  But this time I do have my OH's new trail camera which is one of those infrared and movement detector thingies so I can put it in the box and set it to take photos at intervals, or at movement, or photo plus 10 second video etc etc. Well I can't, as I haven't a clue how it works, but he can. No idea of quality but anything is better than nothing!

By the way I should mention that 'cats' are incredibly fun and rewarding pets but possibly more time consuming than the feline variety!

Raising Swallowtails - Part 7

Back to raising Papilio machaon Swallowtail caterpillars again for the 3rd year. This time though, instead of bringing in caterpillars that I've found outside, I have been able to start right from the very beginning as I was lucky enough to discover a load of eggs on my Bronze Fennel. So in a way this is Part 1!

Swallowtail egg when I brought it inside on 7th May;
not long after this they turned a brown colour.

To keep the fennel as fresh as possible I put it in a jug.
There were 5 eggs on these fronds.

After a long wait wondering whether anything was going to happen, whilst the fennel turned yellow and I feared the worst, suddenly all the eggs turned black! And then they started hatching, although I missed that bit, not that I really was going to sit and stare at eggs through a magnifying glass for hours on end!

Egg just before hatching showing some markings through the shell.

Once they started hatching I had to get them onto fresh fennel which wasn't easy. One refused to budge for about 24 hours so didn't get anything fresh to eat, and I may have harmed it trying to get it onto the fresh fennel (later a friend recommend using a paintbrush which made it a lot easier). So that one didn't survive but the other four did. During this time of rearing them I found another egg which I brought in, and inadvertently brought two more tiny ones in on fennel which I'd picked to feed my babies! So I have a total of seven now, at varying stages of development.

As this is not a scientific study and I cannot say which stage is a specific instar (as how on earth you can tell when something 2-3mm long has moulted), I am calling them 'stages' for the purposes of this post. There were times when two would be at different stages despite being the same age, and one time when one which was much smaller had a moult and missed a stage and suddenly became just like some much bigger ones which moulted at the same time! 

Note: I have just discovered after much searching that the UK form of this butterfly has 5 larval instars. It may be that in my photos below, stage 3 is just an older instar 2 as the UK Butterflies site says that they develop more pronounced colouration at instar 3. However the British one is a subspecies Papilio machaon ssp. britannicus and my continental ones Papilio machaon ssp. machaon are a different subspecies, although I doubt there is any difference in the larval development.  

Stage 1.
One of the first to be born on 15th May.

When freshly emerged the caterpillars measured about 2mm and were jet black with just the faintest hint of a white marking on their backs. This soon became apparent as they grew. I know there are other caterpillars which have these white markings and they are supposed to make them resemble bird droppings, foiling predators at this early stage before they get their bright red markings, which is another defence mechanism, indicating that they may be poisonous.

Stage 2.

Stage 3 (or possibly an older Stage 2!!).

This one on the side of the glass bowl that it is living in is the same age as the one above,
but I have to assume this is Stage 4 as it is quite different
(and now think this is Instar 3, talk about confusing!).

Stage 4 again.

It's been very confusing taking photos and trying to keep records because I've got caterpillars of all sizes now! I did actually get to witness the last half of a moult which is something I have missed in previous years, but that will be on my next post. After moulting some of them eat their moulted skin, which I imagine contains nutrients, but I have no idea why some do and some don't.

I discovered this one just after it had moulted and turned into Stage 5,
because it was eating its moulted skin.

Same Stage 5 one again just about finished eating its skin.
It didn't want all of it and just dropped the rest.

One thing that alerted me to the fact that a moult had happened when the caterpillars were small were the head capsules in the bottom of the bowl. Because they were larger than the frass (poo) I was able to spot them!

Head capsule from a tiny caterpillar.
It only measures about 1mm.

Stage 5 a day or two later and looking pretty smart now with lots of red for danger markings.

The head is getting the familiar Swallowtail black and white markings.

Stage 5 again.
So much easier to photograph when they get bigger!

They are only about 1cm long at this point but they have a huge growth spurt towards the end - I have three currently up to Stage 7 which I think might be the final instar before pupating, but only time will tell! I will continue on another post because I've got plenty more photos.  

Chequered Skipper (Carterocephalus palaemon)

I felt this gorgeous looking skipper deserved a whole blog post to itself!

This is a skipper of forest margins and clearings and woodland edges, particularly damp ones. The larvae feed on various grasses and the adults are on the wing from May to June. In the UK it is restricted to one small area around Fort William in western Scotland, where the larval foodplant is only one grass, Purple Moor-grass.

I'm not seeing this butterfly at home but at the edge of a forest not far from here. The first time I saw it the weather was warm and sunny and it was flitting about and not so easy to capture but I did succeed with a few. I can see that this is a female, the only difference to my eye is that the female has dark markings around the pale 'spots' on the underwing, whereas the male does not.

Chequered Skipper (Carterocephalus palaemon) on an Ox-eye Daisy.

On Hawkbit.

On Hawkbit again but showing more of the top side of the wings.

I also found it another time quite by accident. This was one morning after rain the night before, and whilst it was intermittently sunny, it was still quite cool and damp in the forest. I had been looking at this wildflower which I didn't recognise, so was taking photos of it, both flowers and leaves, to try to ID it at home. I hadn't even realised I had captured the butterfly on the plant whilst I was taking photos of the foliage - can you imagine how I would have felt if I hadn't noticed the butterfly and then found it on my photos at home?! Luckily for me, I did eventually notice it! 

Pale Toadflax (Linaria repens).

A photo showing the leaves of the Pale Toadflax... and something else!

And another photo! With butterflies I start off further away then creep in closer;
better to get distant photos than none at all.

But it wasn't moving. I think it was cold and so I had a wonderful photo op here!

The best thing of all was that it wasn't difficult to get it onto my finger.

So we had a fun photo shoot.

Isn't it cute?!

Aww. :-)