The Birth of the Black Swallowtail

    A fortnight past we left you with a life in transition.  Lin Batkins had adopted the caterpillar of what we assumed was an Eastern Black Swallowtail Butterfly.  She had placed the caterpillar in a safe spot in the shade and fed it more dill from her garden as needed.  As we left her, she had watched the caterpillar form a chrysalis and was waiting, perhaps a bit impatiently, for a butterfly to emerge.

The newly emerged Eastern Black Swallowtail

According to the books, this might take about ten days.

   In the meantime, I had whipped up a paper mache model of what we presumed would be an emerging EBS and placed it in the hands of the postal service.  As promised, it arrived in New Hampshire about a week ago.  As I'm sure you will recall, many butterflies are migratory.  This is especially true of butterflies, like the monarch, which spend their summers in temperate regions.  The monarch migrates south form as far north as Canada to southern Mexico.  Very few butterflies migrate from west to east and virtually none migrate over thousands of miles of open water.  It is roughly 300 miles from Barcelona to Algiers.  The European Painted Lady can manage such an over water journey.  It is 2,500 miles from KOA, and it is only through the miracle of nature that sometime millions of years ago a similar Vanessa butterfly made the journey.  Suffice it say, a paper mache butterfly, no matter how air worthy, would not have stood a chance.  So kudos to our friends at the USPS.

   The better scientists will tell you that the Eastern Black Swallowtail (and Tiger Swallowtail) over winter as a chrysalis, even in snowy New Hampshire.  Hence, they do not migrate like the monarch. 

    During the past two weeks we can assume that the caterpillar, safely ensconced in its chrysalis,

The butterfly begins to unfurl

produced enzymes that almost completely dissolved itself.  The butterfly soup that remained, a rich broth to be sure, contained imaginary discs that would provide the template upon which the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly would be manifest.  

    Two days ago the word spread across the world wide web: a butterfly had been born to us and it was a girl.  Lin is a school teacher and, as it turns our, somewhat of a diarist.  She kept careful notes pertaining to the blessed event.  Given her skill as a writer, it seems that her words should be the ones to tell the story.

• Day 10 passed and I was disappointed.  However I thought the chrysalis was getting darker and the eyespots larger.  I knew I had an umbrella type screen food protector somewhere, but couldn't find it.  Don found it among picnic tablecloths.  It had a broken rib and wouldn't stay open.  The Dr. soldered it.
  
• July 2.  Moved the chrysalis to a tray with mesh tent overhead.  Placed it so it would get sunlight, but not bake.
• Hoping for 4th July birth.  Sigh.  I thought the chrysalis would turn very dark and translucent.

  

  The Eastern Black Swallowtail eschews the proffered dill.

    Didn't happen.
  
• July 5 - no change when I checked at about 8 a.m. At about 9 Don calls me to come look.  Our baby had broken out of the chrysalis and was crawling up the screen of its tent.  We missed the emergence!
  
• spends about an hour unfurling
• flaps and stretches - probiscus unfurls and curls back up.  Now (by the blue markings on the top of her wings) we can see that we have a girl.  She is so beautiful and fresh looking.  Love at first sight.
• I put some dill, a hydrangea flower, and a piece of paper towel soaked in honey water at the bottom of the tent.  She doesn't care.
• All morning we watch her, like new parents watching their baby do nothing.  Tilt the screen back and get some pictures.  She does not leave .
• At about noon she starts flapping strongly.  We take her out and release her near the dill, in hopes that she will imprint on it and return to lay her eggs.
• Not interested in dill! 
  
• She takes off for the apple tree, where she sits quietly for about an hour.  Don and I watch and

  

  The EBS, unfurled in resting position

  are ready to shoo the birds away.  It gets breezy and she flies away.  Good bye.  I hope she finds a mate.  

   In the upcoming film,  Lin is played by Diane Keaton and Don is portrayed by William Barr.  The butterfly plays herself and does all her own stunts.

     I wondered how Lin knew so quickly that this was a female butterfly.  Many, if not most, butterflies display sexual dimorphism.  However, the extent of the difference between sexes can be pretty subtle.  In the case of the monarch, the most common big beautiful butterfly in these Very Sandwich Islands, the difference lies in a widening on one of the myriad veins that spread web-like over the wings.  I am including a photo from Pinterest in which a clever lepidopterist has both a male and female Eastern Black Swallowtail perched simultaneously on his hand.  In the spirit of a picture being worth a thousand words, I will leave it up to you to appreciate how sexy Lin's girl looked.  One might also consider how far off I would have been if I had chosen a male butterfly as my model. 

   Now, you may have noted that I was surprised that she knew it was a girl butterfly.  I have no first hand experience with this species and my second hand experience was mostly limited to looking at pictures on Google images. Most of those do not dwell on this remarkable dimorphism.  Obviously 

Eastern Black Swallowtail, female top, male bottom.  Pinterest

the female is far prettier than the n the male and it is this, along with a healthy measure of sheer  good luck that led me to create,  for the Familia Batkins,  a female EBS.  Obviously the real butterfly is infinitely prettier than my humble creation, which you see here, mounted by Cousin Don among the dill. 

   Lin thought the sculpture might serve as a decoy, bringing more butterflies flocking into her dill.  Next on my list is to devise a butterfly-call which Don can blow for a few hours each day.  Some day the Batkins might wake up to find Elmer Fudd in their garden, shotgun in hand,  muttering about the  waskly buttahfwies.

    So all you amateur biologists out there keep your eyes open.  Perhaps you will find a caterpillar and, if you can keep the early bird at bay, it's possible that Diane Keaton will play you in an upcoming film.  Or maybe William Barr.

 jeff

The author's model butterfly mounted among the dill.

   With the exception of the Pinterest photo, all pictures in this blog were taken by Don and Lin Batkins.  Some of the images were resized and enhanced by the author.