BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT
May 11, 2010
K/1 students are proud to announce the arrival of the first black swallowtail butterfly which emerged May 7, 2010 sometime during lunch. The swallowtail caterpillar was found on the green top of carrots growing in a garden back in September shortly after Labor Day break. Within a short time the swallowtail caterpillar crawled to the top of the bug cage and attached the bottom of its body to the cage with webbing and put a single strand of web across the front of its body to hold it into place.
The chrysalis (pupa stage) of the swallow tailed butterfly looks like the color of wood and has the appearance like the face of a bat. K/1 students had done research and found out that the swallowtail butterfly would stay in the pupa stage through the winter and would not emerge until sometime in early spring.
When the weather changed and spring appeared we started checked the bug cage daily to see if the swallowtail butterflies had emerged. When the months of March and April brought no sign of the swallowtail butterfly K/1 students questioned whether the butterfly would ever appear.
Last week shortly after lunch we saw some unusual movement in the bug cage and the first swallowtail of the 3 chrysalis that we have been caring for since fall had emerged. It was a beautiful black butterfly with a forked tail having yellow markings near the margins of the forewings and more limited blue and red markings on the hindwings. After our butterfly emerged we did more research to determine if our butterfly was a male or female swallowtail. If the butterfly appears to have more yellow coloring it is a male. If the butterfly appears to have more blue markings it is a female.
Our swallowtail was a female.
