Releasing the butterflies

Today we decided to let the butterflies fly free. This was an amazing experience for the boys to get to witness their entire life cycle, thank you so much mom for gifting them with this. I don't think they'll ever forget it.












Here's the link to see the whole process from the beginning: Butterfly Treehouse

And then there were 5

I'm a little late in posting, but the very next day after our first butterfly hatched, we woke up to see that they'd all hatched!

The red stuff isn't blood, it's meconium. The instructions say that's what they use to add color to their wing patterns soon after they are born, and they shed the excess color that they don't use.

Also, it said to put an orange slice in there for them to suck the sugary juice out of, so that's on the bottom of the house.











We're going to let them loose tomorrow or the next day, so expect pictures of that soon!

Butterfly Treehouse Update #4

We have our first butterfly - she hatched sometime during the night. We'll be watching closely today to see if we can catch one in the process of hatching.

When Andrew came to see, he tickled the edge of the house and said "Hi - cootchie cootchie coo"

Butterfly Treehouse update #3

We moved the chrysalids into the treehouse today. They should turn into butterflies in 7-10 days.

Butterfly Treehouse update #2

The caterpillars are halfway through their transformation into chrysalids. Tomorrow or the next day we'll move them from their jar into the mesh house, and within a few days they should turn into butterflies.

They are hanging from the top of the jar now. And it looks like the hard chrysalis shell is almost formed around each of them.



I'm not sure why I can't get decent closeup shots with my camera, I'm still learning all the settings and workings of it.

Butterfly Treehouse update

The caterpillars are growing at an incredibly disturbing rate. They are already at least 5x the size they were when we got them. They look to be heading towards the lid, which means they should start spinning their chrysalis' soon.

The picture are still really hard to see, it will be easier once they are in their pupa stage and I can take them out of the plastic jar and put them into the mesh house.

Butterfly Treehouse

My mom bought the boys a butterfly treehouse a month or so ago and we just received the caterpillars in the mail.

The idea is that you get to watch the life cycle from larvae, to pupa, to butterfly. It should be a fantastic experience for the boys.

I'll be taking pictures throughout the process and posting them here, I'll tag them all "butterfly treehouse" so they are easy to find.