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I think these are second instars of the Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly on fennel, July 24th.
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A closer view of the second instars.
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This may be the fourth instar. I covered the larval plants with some netting, but it did not do the trick, the caterpillars disappeared.
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We built this container for the black swallowtail caterpillars; now I took out the old parsley plants and put in the milkweed plants with the Monarch caterpillars on them.
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This is a second or third instar stage. They go through five instar stages, the last one being the full grown caterpillar.
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This picture shows three different instar stages, maybe two, three and four or five.
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This may be a fourth instar stage, the colors were noticeably different and you can still a bit of the white band in the center.
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The top caterpillar is full grown, the others are a bit smaller.
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This caterpillar is in a prepupa stage.
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A closer view of the prepupa stage.
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At first I thought the caterpillar didn't make it, but now I'm thinking this may be the molted skin because there was a green chrysalis nearby.
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Another caterpillar in the prepupa stage.
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A view of the other side of the same caterpillar.
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And this is what it turned into on July 28th! The first of six chrysalises; two brown, four green. (This one eclosed on August 6th.)
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Another view of the chrysalis.
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Brown chrysalis of the black swallowtail
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Brown chrysalis of the black swallowtail
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Another caterpillar chose a twig to anchor to, and it turned brown to match it.
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This caterpillar is also preparing to pupate.
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Here it's making its silk girdle to suspend itself.
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This is the last of the six caterpillars to pupate. It has turned whitish on the top portion of its body.
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Black swallowtail caterpillar beginning the pupation process
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Spinning its silk girdle.
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Now it's a green chrysalis on a green stem, good camouflage.
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I wanted to watch it change, but it turned into a chrysalis overnight.
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Here are three of the green chrysalises together. Now there are a total of six, four green and two brown.
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Green chrysalis of the black swallowtail butterfly
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This was a green chyrsalis, and this is what it looked like after the butterfly eclosed
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Newly hatched black swallowtail butterfly
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Black swallowtail butterfly, nature's art
