metamorphosis

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of our Painted Lady caterpillars - but they were fairly ordinary looking and just crawled around eating their special concentrated food...

Days after we received them they crawled up to their lids, and started hanging like a 'j' - just like the books said they would! We transferred them to the bin where they transformed into a pupae by shedding their skin and revealing a hard skin called a chrysalis.

A week or so later they started emerging from their pupae, flapping their wings.

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Once they started hatching we were advised to place orange slices in the bin incase the butterflies became hungry before they were released.



Here are pictures from the first release.

Pictures from the second release.

The butterflies were kind (stunned?) enough to rest on the children's hands for a bit and then off they flew!  Pretty incredible!