How to Find Butterfly Cocoons

Video Transcript

"OK, in, in temperate, in temperate climates, the best way to find butterfly cocoons, or butterfly chrysalis or moth cocoons is to look on branches, and usually after it snows it's easier to see them. Unfortunately, birds know this, and other predators, mice and, and other things looking for butterfly chrysalises or moth cocoons, so a lot of times you might find one and there will be a hole in it because a woodpecker has gotten to it, and that's happened to me several times. Butterfly chrysalises will usually be lower down, and sometimes they make them in the grass, or in the brush, or a lot of times you'll find them around water because sometimes caterpillars will fall off of what they were eating and kind of crawl for a while and then get to waters edge, can't go any further and they'll make their chrysalis around there, and the same with moths, they'll make their cocoons around, around water. It's best to look around where their host plants are, so if you're looking for a monarch chrysalis, a big open field with milkweed would be a good spot to look, and they typically might not make it on the milkweed, but some where with in ten, fifteen feet around the plant in the grass, or some where around there. Swallow tail caterpillars will be on the sides of trees, and they look just like bark, so it would be very hard to find them, but if you knew there was a caterpillar in a certain spot, that would be the best way to start looking."