Name that caterpillar...

This weekend, hubby and I found these little guys hanging out on our parsley. It's second-year parsley, so it's gone to seed. Momma must've laid her eggs there, but it didn't seem to me to be a great leafy place for caterpillars to grow up. But they seemed full, since they were just hanging out, not eating. And they look pretty fat and well-fed. We counted about 10 caterpillars that evening.

Actual parsley-munchers in our yard

Today I noticed that there were only 2 left on the second-year parsley, and all the seeds and remaining vegetation was nearly gone. A few feet down is some self-seeded first-year parsley, and there are about 5 of these guys on there, munching away. Where the other 3 are, I don't want to know. They could've found greener pastures, or they could've made someone a green tasty snack. Hopefully not my neighbor's 18-month old son.

Not being a bug expert, I went online to try and identify these guys. I was desperately hoping that they didn't turn out to be the caterpillars of some nasty creature or boring moth or something. At least they weren't those terrible things that have the giant nests in trees and when they hatch they devour the tree and fall on top of you when you get near it. The Eastern tent caterpillar-yeah, that's it (I had to look that up too). Please don't let these be anything nasty like that.

Thank the universe for the interwebs, and all the people out there crazy about caterpillars who set up these great identification search engines. It took me a few tries, but I found our guest: the American or black swallowtail butterfly. Ahhh... big sigh of relief. A fairly common butterfly in these parts, and cousin to Virginia's state insect, the Tiger swallowtail butterfly. These are evidently full-grown caterpillars, so soon they will turn yellower as they enter the pupa stage. Someday these critters will be nice and pretty like this:


As it turns out, they lay their eggs on plants that the caterpillars most like to feast upon: members of the parsley family (including carrots, fennel, dill, celery, and Queen Anne's lace). It would be great to watch them as they enter their chrysalis stage and then turn into butterflies. The only problem with that plan is that they're going to run out of parsley sometime tomorrow. I either need to find more parsley-like material for them to munch on or find someone else who can host them. Hmmm...

Who would have thought caterpillars would work their way to the top of my priority list?