Folks,

On Thursday August 23, 2001 in my yard here in Orange County, NC I managed the time to photograph two different male Black Swallowtails emerging in my garden. It would happen that the chrysalis I was watching wasn't the first to emerge. When I found the first one that emerged it looked almost like a wasp about a inch long and all wrinkly. It was in a mess of Bronze Fennel so I cut the fennel stalk and taped it to a iron chair in my yard. This was the first photo I took of it.

It didn`t take very long to fully expand. After having problems with the wind I moved it to a protected place and took this shot.

As you can see the expired chrysalis is just below the adult butterfly. The chrysalis was existed out the top.You can tell when finding a empty chrysalis a adult butterfly emerged out the top, if it has a hole in the side or bottom a wasp existed the parasitized chrysalis.

This is a full frame close-up I took after moving the fennel stick and swallowtail to a pitch fork with duct tape. This way I arranged the photo so it was out of the wind and in good light. And best of all with a fairly smooth background. The chrysalis photo at the top was also taped to the pitch fork.

The full frame photo below was a set up. I picked up the swallowtail and placed him on the Black-eyed Susan. I was lucky that the flower was out of the wind.

These photos were taken with my Canon EOS 1N, 180 mm macro lens, 540 EZ flash for fill light, Bogen tripod and Kodak E100 VS film. I used spot metering and TV mode set to 1/4 - 1/20th second and f 16 -20 on these with a 2 second delay.

This full slide is of a Black Swallowtail, Papilio polyxenes chrysalis on Bronze Fennel shows the black wings and orange dots. It emerged about 10 minutes after taking this photo. Below is a close-up of the full slide shown above.

While I was photographing the first emerged Black Swallowtail and shot my last frame of film this guy decided it was time to emerge. I ran to get film out of my truck only to find it locked. I rushed to the house and got my keys and film and loaded the camera after it had jumped out of the chrysalis. Those shots are forth coming as the film is still in the camera.

So far as of August 25, 2001 I have had at least 13 adults emerged in my garden and only 2 wasps. Of the 13 adults 10 have been males and 3 were females.
More photos and info on Black Swallowtails can be found here. Also visit Butterflies Found in North Carolina.

All these photos are copyrighted by Randy Emmitt and can be licensed or photos purchased of the full frame slides. PLEASE respect my copyright and don't copy these photos with out permission.

 

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