Giant Swallowtail Butterfly chrysalides look like broken branches. This
one in the green lid is easy to spot, but check out the chrysalis
hanging on this branch, and you can see how hard they are to find
outside:
Ok, here's the secret to those butterfly on fingertip photos:
Raise the caterpillar inside in a bug box (after locating one on its
host plant.)
After the butterfly emerges from its chrysalis
it needs to hang upside-down for a LONG time to stiffen its wings before
it can fly. During that time, you can hold it, look at it, and
photograph it!
You must let it hang upside-down long enough for the wings to get
hard, or the butterflies wings will dry crumpled and it will not be able
to fly, so let it stay in its chosen position for a long while before you
start trying to play with it and get pictures.
Here's a Giant Swallowtail Butterfly sipping nectar from a
Hammock Snakeroot Flower.
By chance, I had two butterflies emerge at about the same time - a Giant
Swallowtail, and an
Orange-Barred Sulphur. I wanted pictures, and my son
wanted to play with the butterflies, so I gently placed them on his
shirt. The Orange-Barred Sulphur climbed up toward the
Giant
Swallowtail, the swallowtail didn't like that, so it climbed away -
right up my sons face: