Butterflies

How does a fragile butterfly survive the winter? Metamorphosis is an incredible process: from egg to larva to pupa to magnificent butterfly. Total recycling! In the pupa, a larva transforms into a butterfly.

So butterflies overwinter as eggs – right? Not all.

Often, the first butterfly out and about in spring is the Mourning Cloak. I doubt anyone outside of royalty wears mourning cloaks anymore, but the deep velvet-like colour of the wings warrants the name. These butterflies overwinter as adults. They find a crevice in the wood and wait until the warmth of spring to come out into the sun and lay their eggs. The larva emerges, eats and eats and then – becomes a pupa. The emerging butterfly overwinters as an adult.

Does a butterfly remember its life as a caterpillar? Probably not.   But imagine going from plodding among the leaves to flying free among the flowers and then off into the sky. If butterflies do have such a memory, then they must know the joy of  new-found freedom.

Or so I’d like to imagine.

Fritillarie

Pale Swallowtail

Pale Swallowtail – did a bird snip that wing tip? The butterfly survived to fly another day.

Mourning Cloak

Mourning Cloak

Western Tiger Swallowtail

all writing and photos copyright Joanne A. Siderius