Bismarck's New Year's Butterfly

Bismarck's first butterfly of 2008 emerged from its chrysalis at 10:13 am on January 2, on the counter top of Bruce and Nancy. The little female butterfly soon crawled up to the night light plugged into the nearby outlet. At 12:48 pm it was sighted on the living room sliding door curtains. Later on in the afternoon it flew downstairs. Sadly, it cannot currently be found.

I don't really know about this being Bismarck's New Year's butterfly. It may be true, but there is no way to be certain. For all I know there are other strange people in Bismarck like me - hatching butterflies in the winter in their kitchen or maybe their secret basement laboratory.

This is our fifth butterfly, and one remains in its chrysalis. The previous four each died within a week of coming out. We've had trouble finding something for them to eat. Looking online we found some references that said they'll feed on nectar, of course, but will also feed on aged or brown bananas or on an orange that has been cut open. We don't plan to spend the money on a flower with nectar (not all have nectar). We did try the bananas and oranges but none have partaken of those fruits. One teacher gave us a vial that could be used to feed sugar water but they didn't seem to care for that either. I don't know the life expectancy of the black swallowtail butterfly, but I'm pretty sure it is longer than four to seven days. I've read that the average life expectancy of all butterfly species is probably around two weeks - meaning some live shorter and some longer than that.

The butterflies always go to the windows - like any good bug would. I wish I could put them out but they wouldn't last very long outside. Last night we got down to -6 deg. F. Right now we show 25 deg.

Here is the link to the post about the fourth butterfly. There are some pretty good pictures. We caught that one coming out of the chrysalis.