Hi, my name is Flutter the Butterfly. I am an adult even though I am only eight weeks old. You often see me flitting from one flower to another whenever you spend some free time playing around the open fields at Ta Qali. However my life does not consist of simply flying around…
I started my life in a clutch of eggs which were laid on the underside of milkweed plants. The eggs were the size of a pin head and as the week passed, our eggs became darker till we finally hatched into long thin caterpillars.
As soon as we became caterpillars, we spent a whole month feasting on leaves. We only stopped eating when our skin got too tight since we grew bigger. By the end of the four weeks, from I tiny cm we reached the full length of 5cm!
Now my wings are beautiful and spread out but at first when I got out of the chrysalis they were crumpled and damp. So I pumped fluid from my abdomen into my lovely wings to open and harden them. Now my diet is different than when I was a caterpillar because I feed on nectars from the heart of the flower with our long straw-like tongue called a proboscis. My life span is from 2 to 6 weeks to enjoy the lovely, warm summer months.
Glenn Pace and Damian Zammit 5.3
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