figured I'd use this wasted duplicate comment space to stick in an answering comment. So, the date stamp should read AFTER Darell's for Nov. 22. Might be a good example of what NOT to do. :-)

The answer is that researching pupae is difficult, there is no comprehensive reference available. Having reared many species myself is a great help. There are lots of pupae pictured on line, and searching for pupae of the various genera is not too difficult. The trick is finding ones that can be trusted as correct. Also, I have a moderately large library of butterfly books, and scattered through them are a number of illustrations. 'The Butterflies of Southern California' by Emmel and Emmel have quite a few illustrations (mostly drawings, but good ones). There are assorted books that show larvae and pupae for most of the eastern species (often butterfly gardening books). Even so, many of the same genera are listed as occur in the West, and even if not the same species, the structure of the pupae is usually quite similar.

Hope that helps a little bit.

As for the threads being hard to follow, they sure are! If one "replies" to the previous comment, they will appear indented one after the other in order. If one uses "add comment" (how this one started out) the post may appear out of sequence, because basically you are starting a new thread. One reason many people (including myself) tend to use the "add comment" as apposed to the "reply to this comment" field, is because when you reply, nobody before you can edit their comments anymore, but if you add a new comment, they can "fix" theirs until somebody else replies. So, it does tend to get stirred up. If you go to "comment viewing options" at the bottom of the page, you can pick "flat list expanded" and "oldest first", which mostly fixes it (everything becomes sequencial, but differing threads might be intermixed), but fools (like me) who do what I'm doing here will still end up putting comments out of sequence. Of course, usually such long discussions don't happen - only on the ones that tweek lots of interest.

I've done a lot of comparing over the last few days, and this is almost certainly in this genus. Based on location, I'd say a good bet is E. chalcedona, but I'm not familiar enough with the butterflies of that area to be sure it's the only species there.

Moved from Butterflies.

chyrsalis. I'm not sure which species, but may be able to get it to genus eventually (probably Chlosyne or Euphydryas). Location may help get it to species.

This one is empty; the butterfly is gone. You can see where it is split open and the surface displaced along the upper edge of the antennae and across the back of the head. The red color is from the fluid ejected by the butterfly when it emerged, which implies it emerged not long before the photo was taken (the color fades away fairly quickly).

chyrsalis. I'm not sure which species, but may be able to get it to genus eventually. Location may help get it to species.

This one is empty; the butterfly is gone. You can see where it is split open and the surface displaced along the upper edge of the antennae and across the back of the head. The red color is from the fluid ejected by the butterfly when it emerged, which implies it emerged not long before the photo was taken (the color fades away fairly quickly).

My best guess is that that is a Nymphalid chrysalis, perhaps one of the many Fritillaries found only out West. Did you take it home with you? It would be great to see what emerges.