Well, our little swallowtail has gone to that big field in the sky. The other wing ripped this morning and we put it down. I did some great macro photos of it yesterday. In the above photo, you can see the shriveled remains of the right wing that didn't develop well in the chrysalis.

It was fun to have a chance to get some macro photos of it. Here you can even see it pooping/excreting something. How do butterflies do it? They even make the act of pooping look dainty and artistic.

You might notice some liquid int he flowers above. Hyacinths aren't that nectar rich--we tried to feed it by putting drops of nectar and juice from a fresh orange into the flowers. Above you can see the butterfly using its proboscis to search out nectar.

Mmmm, it found some tasty nectar. Watch it slurp!

It really dug the freshly squeezed orange juice even more than the home made nectar. I wasn't sure about the nectar, I've read so many different formulas for butterfly nectar: 10 parts water to 1 part sugar, 4 parts water to 1 sugar (aka hummingbird nectar), equal parts water and sugar. I made equal parts first and the swallowtail ignored it. It did sip a little of the hummingbird ratio nectar though.

All the macro photos were taken with the Nikon Coolpix 4500.