Black Swallowtail Caterpillar

My wife received a potted Parsley plant a while back. The other day I noticed a caterpillar heading up a tender stalk. Soon, it was munching away like crazy. After another couple of days there was only one set of leaves remaining and they did not look too good.

I bought some parsley from the store and grabbed a small branch from the yard and made a quick feeding station. It fed and rested for the next day and a half.

This morning it was just hanging out at the top end of the stick I fastened the parsley to. Stayed there for most of the day before moving out of the flower pot. I returned it to try and get it to eat. It was having none of it. I let it roam and it seemed to really want to be over on our Christmas Cactus sitting right next door.

By early evening, it had settled in on one leaf and seemed to compress. We could tell it was pupa time! The night progressed and soon the caterpillar was starting to fasten itself to the leaf.



Once it appeared secured, it let go of the leaf and safety harness it had fashioned to connect to each side of its body and began to ease into a back-leaning posture.



It will be fun to watch the progress of the caterpillar into a butterfly. A simple free gift of a plant has led to a family science encounter! Since the birds are fewer, seems I have something else to add to the blog, after all.

Even though it has been a 3 blog day!

Time to take more photos...