Nature Never Waits

This is an adult female black swallowtail that emerged from the caterpillar and chrysalis that were presented in my earlier posts. Several weeks ago, the chrysalis changed from green to black and I realized that adult emergence would occur within the hour or two.  I loaded up my camera and tripod plus the chrysalis and headed into work.  Due to several accidents, my 50 mile trip turned into a 2 hour drive.  After reaching my destination, the chrysalis split and the butterfly with shriveled wings popped out. So I taped the parsley stem to a wastepaper container and fired away.  This is the last one in the series which features the fully expanded wings and I returned the newly emerged butterfly back to its container and went back to work. Later after returning home, I released the butterfly in my prairie area.  Today, I looked at some of my parsley and two fourth instar caterpillars were present. What a great day! K5 IIs 180 mm f3.5 (1/50 sec at f18, Iso 500).