Last year I noticed tiny black specks on my parsley and wondered what they were. Within several days those specs became tiny parsley works known as a soon-to-be Black Swallowtail butterfly.

Not knowing what to do I was on a quest to see them through metamorphosis. They are ravenous eaters, and they grow before spinning cocoons and going into the metamorphosis stage and will eat all available parsley down to the stem. I ordered a collapsible butterfly house which was an inexpensive stand-up mesh house with a zipper. By the time I was in receipt of the house, the birds had helped themselves to most of them and only one ended up hatching.

I was prepared this year and my large container of parsley is sitting in the mesh house. I covered the top with an old shirt during the day because of the sun. They are growing quickly and devouring the parsley.

If you are interested in watching them through the metamorphosis to flight it would be a great project for you or your children.

Swallowtail butterflies are in the family of Papilionidae and include over 550 species. They are large butterflies with colorful wings, patterned with black and yellow or black and white. The distinctive tail is thin and elongated and they have large eyes. It has a wingspan of 2.7 to 4 inches.

The black swallowtail can be found in Canada south to Florida, Costa Rica, the Rocky Mountains, eastern Arizona, Mexico and Peru. Their habitat includes sea level, mountains, fields, meadows, deserts, marshes, lakes, streams, farms, cities and our backyard.

They are seen in the south from May until October and in some areas from February to November. They fly quickly and close to the ground and in cold weather they hold their abdomens above their wings to keep warm.

Black Swallowtails usually live 10 to 12 days; in some cases they have lived 35 to 45 days. They have two broods per year. The number of eggs laid can range from 100 to 300, some species a few dozen and others 1,000 eggs or more.

The black swallowtail goes through complete metamorphosis. The male forms the territory for mating purposes. The female searches out the male and a successful courtship lasts about 40 seconds; however, the mating ritual can last up to 45 minutes. Females that are uninterested will escape by flying high in the air and downward.

The females fly close to the ground to look for host plants, such as my parsley. There are not any nests
made and the eggs are laid on the host plant.

The young caterpillar emerges with a white spot in the middle of the body which resembles a bird dropping. As they grow, they turn green with red bands. It has a special defense mechanism called an osmeterium — an organ that emits a foul smell to scare predators away when they are threatened.

They form a cocoon called a chrysalis which hangs upright and is light or dark brown. A silk thread that holds the chrysalis is called a girdle. It takes 7 to 10 days for the larvae to become chrysalides and 7 to 10 days for the butterflies to emerge from the chrysalides. The caterpillar's old body dies inside the chrysalis and the new body emerges with beautiful wings in a two-week time span.

This transformation brings us beautiful butterflies. Transformation is the subject of poems, literature and is the very nature of life and rebirth.

Live, love life and butterflies!