Unexpected House Guest
This morning as I was making breakfast, a blob crawling slowly on the floor of the kitchen startled me. It was misshapen and moving slowly. After a minute, I finally realized that is was some sort of butterfly dragging its wings. I picked it up and put it on a hyacinth I purchased two days ago.The bottom half of the right wing is severely shriveled, it looks like something went wrong in the chrysalis. It looks to me like a black swallowtail (but I am happy to defer to a butterfly expert) and it's a tad early for these guys to be out and about in Minnesota. I wonder if this guy came in as a caterpillar on one of the many parsley plants or carrot tops we bring home for Cinnamon and made a chrysalis under our table or on our curtains? I'll have to do some investigating in the kitchen to see if I can find the chrysalis.
In the meantime I made up some butterfly nectar and left it on a Q-Tip in the flowers and left out a few pieces of banana for it to nectar on.
I swear this blog isn't going to the insects--more bird stuff soon.
posted by birdchick at 10:43 AM
1 Comments:
Birds eat butterflies. One year at the Central Valley Birding Symposium, Bob Stewart giving a talk about California butterflies highlighting his book that had just been released. When he flashed a sllide of a butterfly wing with a definite bite out of it. He and the other members of the audience agreed that could be the newest craze. Identifying which bird had tried to prey on butterflies with distinct bill shaped bites out of their wings. Ahhh...California birding!
Enjoy your bug!
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