Today’s post has been a few days in the making. Back in September when the Monarch migration was underway, I photographed a lot of Monarch caterpillars and butterflies in their busy, nonstop activities. I collected several Monarch eggs from the church butterfly garden and set up a “nursery/studio” in my dining room.
One of my main projects this fall was to video the hatching of a Monarch egg. This was done for several eggs and I have been busy the last couple of weeks editing and chopping up the video into smaller clips. From there, I spliced pieces together relevant sections to get a much shorter (less than 3 minutes long) video of one of the little guys hatching. Here is a link to the resulting video, which is posted on YouTube:
Please watch the entire video … the beginning of the video is a bit slow, but watch for movement inside the egg. And after the caterpillar emerges, watch it eat it’s first meal … the protein eggshell. At the end of the video, I’ve included a photo of a newly-hatched caterpillar with a reference, so you can see how small the caterpillar is! Also, please note that all young caterpillars were released back into the butterfly garden, so that they could continue their life’s journey.
Here is an extreme closeup photograph of a Monarch caterpillar emerging from it’s egg:
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark 3 camera body
- Canon 180mm, f/3.5 macro lens, with extension tubes
- Bogen 3021 tripod, with ballhead