Butterfly Diary 25.3 - 14.7.95

by Lena von Strokirch

SATURDAY 25 MARCH. Sunny, snow patches, 6+. A fine spring day. I see the first nettle butterfly fly. It has overwintered.

SUNDAY 26 MARCH. Svante and I wake in the night as the cottage shakes. Full snowstorm. We get up and can barely see out because of the snow. The garden furniture we put out yesterday is snow-covered. Power outage all day. 32 m/s at Understen.

In the evening it calms down and LINDEN is in motion. How has it gone for the butterfly?

SATURDAY 1 APRIL. Sunny, warm, 6+. We sit outside and have coffee. Two nettle butterflies we see. Our willow finch pair has arrived. Crocus, winter aconite and snowdrops. The bees suck nectar.

SUNDAY 23 APRIL. Stockholm for the weekend. Full summer warmth. People dressed lightly.

SATURDAY 29 APRIL. Snow again!

SUNDAY 14 MAY. Today the third snow storm this spring. Before that, wonderful, warm days. In the evening wet snow over wood anemones, grass and nettles. The birches are budding. How have the butterflies managed?

The children are here. I read to Kristian from Tomte Children by Elsa Beskow. He listens intently. The near, true life depicted here really touches children. On the cold veranda we find a dead nettle butterfly. "Grandma, how beautiful it is!"

THURSDAY 25 MAY. Ascension Day. Dawn chorus with neighbors. Lovely! Sunny and warm. Everything is white now from wood anemones gleaming in the glades. 17+. Brimstone butterflies fly about. Mouse ears on the birches. The lark strikes its drill in the sky!

FRIDAY 9 JUNE. Emily, a fine, little new individual is out in the world. Midsummer flowers, dog parsley and almond blossom. Delightful early summer. Now I am also a grandmother.

FRIDAY 30 JUNE. I have no nettle butterfly larvae on my nettles. Perhaps it is too shady. I ring Inger in Hållnäs and there, against their warm barn wall to the south, the larvae are in full activity eating the nettles.

I shall begin with my studies of the nettle butterfly's development, this exciting metamorphosis. For children I want to tell this true tale in puppet theatre form.

Seven larvae I have brought with me from Hållnäs. I arrange several roomy glass jars. Fresh nettle leaves. I make sure it is moist. Cover with thin cloth.

SATURDAY 1 JULY 12.00
One larva has begun to seek a place under

Nisse.

13.00
Five larvae begin to seek places under the leaves and gradually they hang as well.

SUNDAY 2 JULY 7.30
A light green pupa. Nisse has pupated. The five larvae are muted in colour, almost grey. They look "lifeless".

8.00
One larva begins to move. It seems to "swell". Like waves through the body goes a "pumping", rhythmically.

Suddenly the skin splits at the "neck" and then along the upper side up to the attachment point. A light green pupa bulges forth. In two minutes this happened. The dry, dark skin remains attached for a while at the attachment point, then falls down. With the magnifying glass I see the larva's empty head-shell and skin clearly. The pupa is soft and looks like a leaf. If I touch it, it jerks.

Later six light green pupae hang. Nisse's pupa has a golden gleaming speckle.

After 6-7 hours they are golden. Like gold jewellery they shimmer under the leaves.

19.00
The last, seventh larva has now attached itself under a leaf.

SUNDAY 3 JULY 9.00
In the morning, one more light green pupa. The other pupae have acquired a deeper gold tone. Their shells have hardened.

TUESDAY 4 JULY.
The pupae darken.

WEDNESDAY 5 JULY.
The pupae darken.

THURSDAY 6 JULY.
With the magnifying glass I see dark butterfly wings under the thin pupal shell.

FRIDAY 7 JULY.
Dark pupae.

SATURDAY 8 JULY.
Dark pupae.

SUNDAY 9 JULY.
Dark pupae.

MONDAY 10 JULY.
Dark pupae.

TUESDAY 11 JULY.
Dark pupae.

WEDNESDAY 12 JULY.
Four butterflies hatch in the morning. In the afternoon I release them. It is sunny and warm outside. The butterflies are so beautiful. Warm brown with black, white and blue in the markings. Gildedly hairy and the body green-black.

THURSDAY 13 JULY.
In the morning two butterflies sit on their empty pupal shells.

In the afternoon they fly out over our meadow.

I read in The Animal World, printed 1938, the chapter Butterflies, Lepidoptera. The introduction...

"Butterflies are among the most familiar of insects. In summer one rejoices at their delicate flight among the flowers and at their colours and the poets sing of these children of joy and light. Yet, the butterflies which thrive and play in sunlight, the so-called day butterflies, constitute only a small number of the great host of 100,000s of species which are counted to this order."

FRIDAY 14 JULY. 8.15

The last pupa. Is there any life under the covering? Then something begins to happen. I have the magnifying glass at hand. Now I want to see how the hatching takes place.

Kristian is with us and I call him.

8.20

The butterfly cracks the shell. At the bottom it opens up. We see the small legs, the head, the short, folded wings. When it has come out it holds itself fast to the pupal shell and hangs down. The wings are limp and still short. The hatching took 9-10 minutes.

It hangs like that for a long time. Gradually the wing ribs fill out and the wings "enlarge".

Slowly the butterfly climbs up on the pupal shell.

10.00

The butterfly now sits on a leaf that it has climbed to. It moves its wings slowly. They are outstretched. The sun shines through the window. The wings tremble. We name our butterfly Vanessa. The antennae are now unfolded. They lay before under the body. She defecates a red drop: Meconium. She unrolls her proboscis, as if "testing" it. She spreads her wings, flutters against the window pane.

Then we release her into the sunlight.

It is midday, warm and lovely.

Her wings carry her on her first airborne journey over yellow bedstraw, round-headed rampion and maiden pink. Kristian and I see her disappear into sunlight, flowers and sky.

BUTTERFLY SUMMER!

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# Insects in Literature 6

From one of our members, Gunilla Jansson in Uppsala, suggestions have come in for suitable poems and stories in our regular feature: "Insects in Literature"

A lover of order might perhaps object that this feature does not concern insects but spiders. Since the society also treats these arthropods, however, the editor thanks you for this contribution. Asah Eriksson has illustrated this long-legged creature and Gunnar Bakken contributes with "some more flesh on the bones" regarding these gangly creatures.

Both poems are by Harry Martinsson – who else would one be inclined to add. What joy he has given us with his ingenious little observations. Just think of looking up at one's knees!

"Låcken" is from "Tuvor" and "Den Trådbente" from "Under på marken"

THE LONG-LEGGED ONE

The exceedingly long-legged harvestman stilts carefully about on the path. The little round body seems to hang suspended in the middle of a walking thread-frame. He resembles a little grey pea borne along by eight well-disciplined hairs.

He must constantly see space as we see it when we look through a high cable-suspended footbridge. The harvestman sees his framework silhouetted against the sky, but is none the worse for it, indeed finds it natural for a harvestman.

Yet sometimes it is as if one thought he said:

Send word, send word
to my high-set knees.

One imagines he sometimes stands still and glances upward toward his thread-thin knee-alps, sighing over the fact that he shall never ever be able to reach up there.

Such of course is merely imagination. But one cannot help but wonder over how and in what way such small, slender creatures perceive life and themselves.

Life dwells also in this one, for us so complicated but for itself perhaps so ingeniously built. Small droplets of mystery, science and art sweat from him, and he steps onwards, for us lacking charm but strange.

Some harvestman species have coloured bodies and shine more beautifully. Some are yellow. Mostly one sees the yellow one first as it comes like a yellow little colour-ball, a mimosa blossom, but on closer inspection one discovers the legs working to carry along the little yellow body, the legs moving hair-fine, entangled here and there among the fine grass straws.

Few people surely start at the sight of a harvestman. It is known to be both an advocate of peace and freedom. On the contrary, long ago in the world it was believed to carry luck and fortune in a little sack.