Look Who Hatched on a Rainy Day - by Sunscape

I was beginning to wonder if the last caccoon from last fall was ever going to produce a Black Swallowtail butterfly.

I had hung the top of the butterfly cage on the back porch, hoping for the best. The other one had hatched inside my greenhouse two weeks earlier.

I was in the kitchen making some ferments when I saw him out of the corner of my eye. He had worked his way onto one of the porch signs and was working on filling up his wings.

It would be hours before he would be strong enough to fly. By the time he could, it started getting windy, and then a soft rain came.

The butterfly ended up hanging onto the sign all night long and into mid-morning.

Around 10:30 a.m., I moved him off the sign and onto the hanging Impatiens basket nearby.

The morning temperature was still on the cooler side, and the Swallowtail stayed on the plant until the afternoon sun came out. I never did see him take his first flight, but I have seen him since flying around the yard along with some yellow Swallowtails that have migrated here.

That makes two years in a row that I wintered over two caccoons successfully. How fun is that?