Butterfly Hunting

This afternoon we went to a park to see if we could round up some native butterflies to observe. We took our nets and our small butterfly enclosure and headed out. We were quite successful!



The first butterfly we caught was a viceroy. We actually ended up catching 3 of these today. In our area, the viceroy butterfly mimics the monarch. You can tell it's a viceroy mainly because of the solid black line across the veins on their bottom wings. In other areas of the country (like Florida), they mimic the queen or soldier butterfly.














Here is a spicebush swallowtail. It is a big butterfly, but there are other types of swallowtails that are larger. Swallowtails are the next type of butterfly I would like to attract. The caterpillar of this particular type looks like bird poop, which Danielle thinks is both cool and gross.






Here is an orange sulphur butterfly and a cabbage white butterfly. We also caught a pearl crescent, which is a very small butterfly. We saw a few painted lady butterflies, but they were too fast for us today. We didn't see any monarchs in the field today.

We let each butterfly go after we had the chance to look at it for a minute. I think the kids were most interested in the viceroy, because it looks so similar to the monarch, and the swallowtail because it was so big. They ran around a lot trying to keep up with the butterflies, so they expended a great deal of energy, too. It was a good time!

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Danielle really wanted to "hold" our monarchs. We've looked forward to having monarchs since last fall, so I hated to disappoint her. I've read it's harmless as long as you don't touch their wings much, but I was afraid she was going to squish them against the top of the enclosure. They are so much bigger than the painted ladies. So, this morning we took the enclosure into our 1/2 bath and let Danielle hold them. They flew around some and landed in some funny spots, but mostly they just crawled around. Danielle had some orange juice on her hands, which I think helped.



























Is everyone thoroughly tired of butterfly pictures yet?