Tuesday, August 26, 2008

A Monarch Butterfly Within

nature controlling
urges within create change
metamorphosis
I have been watching this Monarch Butterfly cocoon in its chrysalis stage of development for the past five days. I had chanced upon it on August 20th attached to the under side of a Milkweed leaf. When finding it I decided to check on it each day in hopes that I could maybe get to see it emerge as a fully developed Monarch Butterfly. My first posting on this interesting find can be found HERE.
Yesterday morning (25th) it was very exciting to see that the casing of the cocoon had thinned to a transparency and I could see the actual Monarch Butterfly folded up within it! This is a picture that I hoped for and I was not disappointed!! Below is a photo of this same view and I have used the poster edge filter from Photoshop to give it a finer detail for viewing. I had taken these pictures around 9 am and decided to return around noon to check on its further development.

11 comments:

kjpweb said...

Again! Cool, cool, cool!
Cheers, Klaus

Dianne said...

thanks so much for sharing that!!!

amazing and beautiful

and your Ruby Tuesday post is lovely, I'm looking forward to autumn

Anonymous said...

This is an incredible series of photos. I love this post and the later one of the monarch drying its wings.

me ann my camera said...

kjpweb, dianne and wren:
Thank you all for your comments. And I am you enjoyed the photos. I enjoyed the adventure :-)

Storytellin' Mama said...

Fabulous!

My kids have been on a caterpillar and butterfly craze.

Love it!

Ruth said...

I collected 4 caterpillars last evening and am looking after them on our deck. The city mowed 2 field of "weeds" in preparation for the start of school so I thought I had better rescue these monarch larvae. I do hope to see at least one of them emerge. Great pictures!

me ann my camera said...

ruth:
Good luck with the caterpillars. Is is fascinating to watch them go through each stage. The 'from caterpillar to butterfly' transformation is so totally amazing!

Geraldine said...

How incredibly beautiful! To witness the transformation of this beautiful, soon to be free, butterfly. Thanks for sharing with us Ann.

www.mypoeticpath.wordpress.com

mansuetude said...

Popped over from Gwen B's blog. I have never seen this; love the transparency. Thank you so much for sharing this.

Anonymous said...

wow amazing picture

It's OK to be WEIRD! said...

Those are simply gorgeous photos. What an awesome opportunity. I 'googled' to find a picture of a monarch cocoon to show my kiddos and found these great pictures. Well done, and thanks for sharing!!