Too bad Anna won’t remember it well! It’s a Western Tiger Swallowtail… you know, those pretty black and yellow ones!
When we found it, it looked like the picture on the following link… turns out it only turns brown like that right before it pupates:
http://eb1.cs.umbc.edu/fieldmarking/?p=153
When it was young, it looked like the following:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/31541
Here is a picture of how it looks when it is a chrysalis and one from when it is a butterfly! It is amazing… looks JUST like a piece of wood… only it moves sometimes:
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species?l=1375&chosen_state=41*Oregon
So according to http://www.squidoo.com/tigerswallowtail the chrysalis is green if it is summer (and coming out soon) but brown if it is going to overwinter. Ours is brown… so I assume it’s in there until February or March. Have any of you overwintered a chrysalis before? Do we keep it damp? Dry? Cold? Cool? Should I put it in the fridge? Just outside somewhere? It attached itself to a green bean… I am worried that the bean will rot and the chrysalis will fall down. What should I do? Can I transfer it to a stick or will that break it?
Very cool! I have no idea how to care for it– I suppose you can google it though!
🙂
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