Round Four - Day Twenty Eight - First Peacock In It's Full Glory

WOW!!! Look at this beauty. There is a video of his release to come, which was really quite exciting.

What a stunner!!!!

Round Four - Day Twenty Eight - My First Peacock Butterfly has Emerged!

Yesterday we noticed that the first pupa to change was getting very dark and by the time I went to bed the pupa was virtually black. I know that the Peacock's underwings are jet black so I was hoping that was the reason for the strange change.

This morning when I got up my first Peacock butterfly had emerged, of course the whole process happened while I was asleep.

So here he is:

Ta Dah!

 Hopefully lots more photo's to come but he hasn't moved yet. I can't wait to see him with his wings open!

Round Four - Day Seventeen - Second Peacock to a pupa

My second Peacock caterpillar changed to a pupa this afternoon, I managed to capture some video. I have sped up the video x2.

Round Four - Day Fifteen - Pupa Stage for the Peacock No 1

Yesterday evening (17th August) at about 19:30 my first Peacock caterpillar started hanging in the "J" postion, ready to become a pupa.

This was taken the next morning just 3/4 hours before the change began

By 13:00 today he started changing but I just missed the beginning and then because he was moving about so much the camera lost it's focus so here are some screen shots from the video I managed to capture:

Most of the pupa is visible and the old caterpillar skin is still attached

One minute later and the pupa is wriggling to free the skin which is only just on the pupa now 

15 seconds later the pupa is moving violently and the skin is ready to fall off

Round Four - Day Twelve - Sad!

The poor little caterpillar that was about to moult died yesterday afternoon. Something went very wrong with the whole moulting process and he didn't make it.

I still have three healthy caterpillars, two are quite a bit bigger than the third, so we will just have to wait and see!

Round Four - Day Eleven - Weird!

There is one caterpillar that has not had his second moult but has now stopped eating and has made himself a web on the underside of a leaf and seems ready to shed his skin. The only thing is that there have been two caterpillars on top of the same leaf eating it, the result is quite weird...

Hanging in mid air it seems?!

The little guy is now just hanging by the web, there is no leaf above him at all. I hope he moults soon and gets out of there OK.

Round Four - Day Nine - Growing fast!

Just out of curiosity (and I had the caterpillars out to clean the bowl) I thought I would give some scale to how big and fast these fellas are growing. This is the day after the second moult

Allowing for the curve of the leaf he is well over 3.5 cm long.