Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Painted Lady Butterflies!

Two more butterflies hatched today, and we got to see it all happen live. It's so much better than last year, when it happened over the weekend and we didn't see anything.

Here's the butterfly box.

The caterpillars made their chrysalis on a piece of paper towel that was at the top of their container. I moved the paper towel into the butterfly house and taped it to the wall. You can see twigs and a cup in the picture. The butterflies hang on the twigs to dry their wings. The cup has sugar water and a rolled up paper towel to absorb the water - the butterflies drink it like nectar.

Here's a butterfly just seconds after it came out of its chrysalis. You can see the empty chrysalis next to it.


And here's one of the butterflies that hatched yesterday, showing off it's colors.


They're so much fun to watch! Unfortunately, they only have a life span of about two weeks, so we're letting them go on Monday.

1 comment:

la maestra said...

we did this when i student taught except they all died and it was totally anti-climatic. i saw some emerging butterflies in another teacher's room and the dripping blood made me queasy. but i'm glad all your butterfly business turned out well! =)