Meet Juliette.

[wlou]

The beautiful Black Swallowtail butterfly lays his eggs on the parsley in my garden. I have been following the progress of the 5 eggs I could see. They are the size of a grain of salt at first. Of the 5, 2 made it to this stage that I named them Romeo and Juliette. I have no idea if caterpillar have a gender. Then yesterday the biggest one Romeo vanished.I knew they go find a place where they attach themselves, and form a cocoon. This morning Juliette was nowhere to be seen on the parsley. I finally found her on the green chives, only a couple inches from the ground. The littles whites threads we see between her front legs is silk she weaves to form her cocoon. If anyone has info on these I would love to hear from you.
100 Macro lens, f10, flash, reflector, early morning before the sun was too high,

[Shadowman]

Nicely composed and exposed.

[Kodiak]

100 Macro lens, f10, flash, reflector…

Bonjour Louise,
Salut Juliette, enchanté!

…the right focal length (which make), an acceptable aperture, a discrete
flash —do you really mean reflector or diffusor?

All together a good recipe! If I may suggest, choose more adequately
the PoF and aperture… so that the whole caterpillar in focus. ;-)

[IzzieK]

Beautiful, Louise...very nicely caught. I suppose we will see her progress as she goes along wrapping herself around her cocoon. But to answer your question about if caterpillars have genders, yes they do. Look here:
http://www.intelligentanswers.co.uk/...p?topic=5786.0

[NorthernFocus]

Now that is a dedicated photographer/naturalist. Sacrificing one's garden plants to the caterpillars in order to observe and photograph them. Hopefully Romeo is tucked safely away in a cacoon and didn't provide a meal for a bird

[bnnrcn]

Very nice composition and colours