Red Admiral Release...

I collected this little fella as a caterpillar a few weeks ago. He was around for a few days then turned into a pupa. Ten days later this gorgeous creature emerged from it's chrysalis and we released it in the garden, on to the buddleia. Firstly I could not believe that it didn't fly off straight away, then what came next was quite incredible......

Small Tortoiseshells on our Buddleia

These gorgeous creatures have been in our garden for the last 4 days, but at this point there were about 30 all at one time just on the buddleia (although they were really difficult to count!) We just couldn't believe it!!!

Peacock Butterfly Emerging Video!

Finally the video is uploaded...

I have put over 4 hours worth of video, from the first signs of change to a butterfly with straight wings, into a 3min 33sec video. The first part with the stills taken at 10 min intervals you can see that the butterfly seems to be "unsticking" itself from the cocoon in stages. This takes about 2 hours and then there appears to be period of rest. The second part of the video is where the gorgeous creature breaks out by splitting the chrysalis and pulling itself out, this section I have sped up by 2x. The last part of the process is where the body changes shape (can't be seen in this video) and the wings straighten, this I have shown at 5x normal speed.

I hope you enjoy!!

Green Veined White Butterfly in our new Flowerbed

My OH created this gorgeous video of a beautiful butterfly feeding from the Hebe flowers in our new flowerbed...

Peacock - Day 14 - Butterfly!

I am so excited!!! Last night we decided to set up the video camera and some lighting to see if we could capture the Peacock emerging. The pupa was looking really dark and as the Peacock has jet black under wings we thought that now could be a good time.

Completely different colouring than the last photos 4 days ago!

We also know that the butterflies emerged early in the morning last year. So my lovely OH did a fantastic job setting up the "studio".

The video camera was plugged in (so no chance the battery could run out), a 32Gb card would give us 8 hours of video (fingers crossed), the low wattage lights were positioned, the camera was focused and now all we had to do was wait......


...... When I got up this morning there was a butterfly positioned beautifully next to the empty cocoon! The camera was still running! The card wasn't full! - YES!!!! It had worked, at last we could see the moment a Peacock butterfly emerges.

The video is fantastic!! A real eye opener, I had no idea that the whole process took so long. It's going to take me a while to edit this video, but I will do my best because it is just sooooo good!

The video was uploaded on the 9th October 2015, but I am putting it here too

Peacock - Day 9 - Pupa (Detailed Photos)

Here are two fantastic shots of the pupa, taken by my OH..

The pupa has slightly different colouring from when it first changed, I should imagine that he will be emerging in the next few days

Peacock - Day 3 - Pupa

I came down this morning to a changed caterpillar and the skin he had just shed (which is fascinating).

You can see where the head part has split in two.

Here you can clearly see his little legs all bunched up

And now he looks like this..

What a miraculous change!