Caterpillars in the Garden

Our grandsons are visiting us for the summer. The oldest, Davey, loves taking pictures of the animals and gardens but especially the bugs and wildlife he discovers while exploring at Fort Getaway. Check out a few of his pictures of the swallowtail caterpillars, chrysalis and butterfly in the garden.

caterpillars in the garden

While checking out the edible landscape garden he discovered a group of black swallowtail caterpillar munching on our Parsley plant. A couple weeks earlier these colorful caterpillar devoured our dill, leaving nothing but bare stems.

close up

Luckily, I had harvested some of the parsley before they found this bush. Of course, we don’t mind losing a few plants to the caterpillars in the garden because the reward will be seeing the beautiful butterfly fluttering around.

caterpillar

 This one seemed to sit up and say cheese as Davey snapped the picture.

smile for the camera

Within a few days of taking the pictures above we found the chrysalis hanging from the stems of the Parsley plant.

starting the transformation

 

In a couple of weeks we hope to see more swallowtail, like the ones we saw below, flying along with the Zebras, Monarchs and Sulfurs that are in our butterfly garden.

swallowtail butterfly

swallowtail

Davey, 10 and his camera

Davey 10                     davey in action

caterpillars

One more picture Davey wanted to share. We aren’t sure if this is a tiny swallowtail caterpillar on the right or a different caterpillar altogether.

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