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Health & Fitness

Butterfly Born on the 4th of July

In which a butterfly emerges, caterpillars continue to grow, and eggs are laid. The life cycle continues.

We're still finding anise swallowtail butterfly eggs on the fennel in our garden. And ta .. daaa... the first of the recent batch we're raising emerged today. Born on the Fourth of July; more orange, yellow and blue than red, white and blue, and with stripes!

The caterpillar at the top of the enclosure looks like it's ready to form its chrysalis. And the next photo shows its younger sibling caterpillars, still eating away.

We've been gathering fennel around the neighborhood, because our plants are starting to be pretty sparse after feeding at least 30 growing caterpillars!

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So which do you think came first, the butterfly or the egg? I don't have an answer to that old conundrum, but to bring the story full cycle, I just took a photo of one of the anise swallowtails depositing eggs on the fennel in our garden.

Since we're also finding monarch butterfly eggs on our milkweed, I took an extreme closeup photo of a monarch butterfly egg (on the left) and an anise swallowtail egg (on the right), to compare their sizes, and with the head of a needle included for scale.

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Click here to see my post about the monarch butterfly that left that egg.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - if you have to cut down the fennel that's growing on your property, please check it carefully for eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalises first. You could be killing an entire generation of anise swallowtail butterflies.

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