I plant many different plants in my gardens for the purpose of attracting insects, especially butterflies. Two years ago I planted a fennel plant to attract Black Swallowtails. The swallowtails don’t feed on the plants, but the plant is where the butterfly will lay it’s eggs, which hatch into caterpillars.

 

The Black Swallowtail caterpillar is very colorful and is easy to spot and photograph. One thing I have tried to capture on film, or for that matter witness, is the stage that the caterpillar attaches to a plant, sheds it’s outer skin and becomes a chrysalis or cocoon. I have seen the butterfly emerge from the chrysalis, but it wasn’t in a good spot to photograph.

 

This year I hope to capture the emergence on my camera. I just missed the caterpillar to chrysalis transformation by minutes on a couple of occasions. Many of the caterpillars and chrysalis fall victim to predation from birds and bigger bugs so finding them and protecting them in some fashion helps to ensure getting images.

 

 

 

 

These two images are of a Black Swallowtail in the caterpillar and chrysalis stages. They are not the same insect in the images, these are 2 separate critters.

 

I made the images using the Nikon D-300s, Tamron 90mm Macro lens, a Marumi Circular Polarizer, mounted tightly on the Vanguard Alta Pro 283 CT with the ABH-340K head. I also used the Interfit Delta remote release in combination with mirror lock up on the camera to eliminate camera shake. The exposures were in the range of 1/2 second at times so movement would have ruined the images.