Sunday - July 30 -

It has been 2 weeks since I rescued the baby caterpillars.  Guess what!  We have our first chrysalis. The little guy I helped hang in a "J" last night is now a chrysalis. Exciting! It is beautiful.

Another caterpillar has also gone into the chrysalis stage now too. So Chrysalis Count is 2.

The little guy I saved all safe in a chrysalis now.

Now there are 5 caterpillars who have successfully hung themselves upside down in the "J" position.

 I found another one that had dropped to the bottom of the cage due to unsuccessful attaching.

I glued him back up and hope that he will also become a chrysalis.

I have the caterpillars in two separate cages. All of the above caterpillars are in a larger cage and there are 13 caterpillars total.

In cage #2 - a smalled cage - I have 11 caterpillars. This cage had 3 caterpillars that were spinning silk threads at the top of the cage.

Bad news was that they spun so much silk, their bodies were stuck to the cage and they could not hang.

Operation Butterfly 2 and 3. I untangled them carefully from the silky mess and glued them hanging correctly. We'll see what happens. These two caterpillars have a fear of heights I think. I had to encourage them to let go and just "hang loose."

Here are the two little reluctant hangers - hanging in out. 

Stay tuned for updates tomorrow. I hope to see more Chrysalis.

July 29 - Saturday Night - Operation Butterfly

I decided to try to save the curled up caterpillar. Just in case he was just trying to hang in the "J" position and just didn't make it.  I careful attached the silk thread at the end of the cocoon to the top of the butterfly cage so he could hang. After a while I began to see movement in the caterpillar.

I became worried that I had hung him upside down before he was ready but stayed confident that he was ready since he had spun the thread that would "glue" him to something in order to hang.

We will see what happens.

Caterpillars are so  big and munching so much, you can hear them munching!

July 30 - Saturday - Escapees

The caterpillars are escaping. I think they are searching for more food.  We found 5 caterpillars crawling around the classroom.  Caterpillar Count - All 24 were accounted for.

Found a great crown flower source today. Lots of fresh leaves for the hungry caterpillars.They can now munch up a 5 inch leaf in an hour.

One caterpillar was curled up on the table with some silk coming out of the end.  It looked dead. When I lifted it up it dangled into a "J" which is the position they get in when they are getting ready to become a chrysalis.

Big Cat and Little Cat.

Friday, July 29 - Out of Food

July 29 - The caterpillars are still eating!  We are all out of food. I have to go find a crown flower tree.

7-29 - Found food for now but will need more again soon.

Lost a caterpillar - It fell into the jar of water that held crown flowers in the cage. He fell in and couldn't get out. Sad. :(

July 27 - Growing and growing and growing...

Sunday, July 24 - WOW!

Growing, Growing and Growing! Some of them will be ready to go into the next phase soon.

Thursday - July 21

Beautiful Butterfly Batik Sarong/Pareo

http://www.butterflyhawaii.com/Gifts/butterfly-gifts.html

Check out the Butterfly Batik Sarong/Pareo... Designed by Aunty Springs who has a Butterfly Farm and brought us all of the crown flower cuttings.

The Butterfly Restoration Project is selling them as a fundraiser.  It is beautiful! The entire life cycle. The picture does not show do it justice.

June 20 - Moving Day!

We have crown flowers!  Aunty Springs and the Gilbert Ohana came through with crown flower cuttings. More cuttings for very hungry caterpillars just in time.

Time to move them onto the new stems. Stay tuned!

July 19 - Growing!

The caterpillars are growing so fast!   I have friends bringing in more crown flower leaves tomorrow.

July 17, One more baby!

I only found one more baby caterpillar today. The babies are all munching away. I will have to get some fresh leaves tomorrow. It is amazing how much they grow in just one day. See leaf below...

Caterpillar next to a pencil so you can see how tiny they really are!

June 17, 2 more babies!

I went back to check the plants again today and found two more teeny-tiny babies.  All of the babies inside the cage are happily munching and are already noticeably growing larger. A few are up to the size of a grain of rice now.

Above are the two little caterpillars that were born today (the two little ones in the middle) . On the left and right are two from yesterday. You can see the size difference. They are only a day older!

This leaf is only about an inch across in size! So all four of the caterpillars are very tiny!

More pictures tomorrow!  There may be a few more eggs left so we may even have more new arrivals.

June 15 - 16, 2010 Babies are born!

Caterpillars are popping out all over! How exciting. They are so tiny. Most are about a quarter of the size of a grain of rice. Already lurking around were a lizard,  2 birds and a spider. If I did not move them to safety, they would be dinner! YIKES!

The animal and insect loving, mama in me could not let them stay there to be devoured. I carefully rescued 30+ baby caterpillars on June 16th and transferred them into the butterfly cage in the classroom.  Here is a picture of one of the little babies.

They are all now safe and sound inside (in the butterfly cage) with lots of crown flower leaves to munch on. I will have to start scouting out a crown flower tree because they will be ready for more leaves soon.

I think there are about 30 babies (or more). They are so tiny - it was hard to count them all. I will have to go back tomorrow to see if any more hatch.

EGGS! July 12, 2011

I found eggs on the leaves of the crown flower plants. Exciting!

Butterfly Sighting - July 10- 2011

Monarch

A butterfly sighting!  Camp Plumeria girls report some fluttering around the school.

June 2011

 JUNE 2011

Half of the crown flower cuttings we planted survived and began to sprout with shoots of new crown flower leaves. One of the crown flower plants even had bloomed. We were very excited!

Eggs must have been laid on the new leaves sometime in late June, because the leaves all of a sudden looked liked swiss cheese. There obviously were hungry caterpillars munching away on the leaves. The sad thing is that there was not a caterpillar to be found on the leaves. I wondered where they had gone?Then I sadly realized that they must have become snacks for lizards, insects, spiders and birds. 

Only about 10% of caterpillars survive to become butterflies.

The food chain of nature but so sad for our caterpillar friends.