Sunday, March 7, 2010

Butterflies

Life for butterflies is hard here in Minnesota. The butterflies that live here need to find a way to survive the harsh winter climate. They accomplish this in a variety of different ways.
For example the eastern tailed-blue, pictured above, will over winter in its larval form. It will usually find a seed pod to crawl into for cover. When winter is over the caterpillar already has a food source at hand.

The cabbage white butterfly, on the other hand, survives winter in its pupae state. Because it has already begun to change over the winter we usually see these types of butterflies emerging from their chrysalis as early as the beginning of May. Other types of butterflies will over winter as eggs or as adult butterflies.

4 comments:

Maria said...

Butterflies are such soft and lovely creatures.
~ It's amazing what walks, flies, crawls and swims on this planet! So much diversity~
Thanks for teaching us a little more about it each week!
~Maria

penny said...

Nature sure is wonderful and you do a great job of showing its beauty. Your shots are amazing.

Kim, USA said...

Oh wow I don't know how you can get close to a butterfly. Great shot!

The petal

Andree said...

Great info. Especially for me who is just learning. I photographed a cabbage white last summer as she was laying eggs! How exciting is that! Yours has that familiar spot but is shaded differently. Beautiful photos. Thank you.