I’m feeling completely steeped in Cecropias – I had 17 cocoons and almost all of them have hatched this week – two or three a day.

Be sure to look at the photos I took of a moth emerging from its cocoon – being able to see that was very exciting. I almost always miss the emergence of moths and butterflies because it happens so quickly. I imagine they’re very vulnerable to predators during that time, so it’s good for them to be fast. There’s also a link in that story to a video that Mike took of the moth as it was pumping out his wings after emerging.

The first few days the moths were all males, so I just released them. But now I’ve been getting females – sometimes several a day – and I’m getting up at 4:30am to mate them.

Here’s one of the males.

And here’s a female.

It’s difficult to get these pictures – the moths are in cages, and it takes some contortions to get my camera in a place where the lens is pointing at the moth, and I can still see to focus the camera. Mike took this picture of me taking a picture of some of the mating moths.

One male that came to mate one of the females was very small – about half the size of the female. I’d never seen one that small before. Here they are.

It will be interesting to see if any of their offspring are smaller than normal.

One of the problems I’ve had this year has been getting the mated females to fly away. I keep them for a while to let them lay some eggs for me, and then release them to lay the rest of their eggs in the wild. After sitting in their cages for a couple days waiting for a male, mating and egg laying, they either don’t want to leave, or can’t figure out how to fly. Sometimes I’ve had to carry them – in the middle of the night – to a branch of a tree.

Here are some eggs of the next generation – laid on a brown paper bag. They should hatch in about a week and spend the summer as caterpillars.