Monarch Egg Hatching sequence

I had the pleasure of watching and photographing a Monarch egg hatching late yesterday. These 6 images are all full frame at about 1.5X (7D2, 180mm macro L at nearly it’s closest focus). The different colors are due to the lighting changing as the shadows moved. The series shows the cat eating a hole in the egg case, climbing out and turning around to munch on the egg case for it’s first meal.

You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.

Wow! This is incredible, Mark! Thank you for sharing this series of images. I didn’t realize the egg nor the Caterpillar were that tiny. Well done.

Mark, a truly wonderful story telling sequence of images here. I too was amazed at how small the actual egg to caterpillar sizes were in the sequence. It goes to show how amazing our natural world is at all different sizes…:+1::+1:

Wow, how interesting! Thanks for sharing this.

Mark: We’ve “raised” Monarchs for many years and I’ve seen this first hand several times. It never gets old. It reminds me of a series of images I took several years ago of a Monarch emerging. I may have to go hard drive diving to see if I can find them. :+1::+1:for this. >=))>