Sunday, August 1, 2021

Following the Monarch

 Today I REALLY broke the rule about not chasing butterflies, but it sort of paid off, so I guess I don't regret it. Except for the amount of time I spent following her around, I didn't really get what I wanted. There is probably a life lesson in there somewhere.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Monarch butterfly. Female.

Why did I take that picture, you ask? Because of what she was doing:

In the picture above she is depositing this egg on the milkweed plant.

I followed her around the backyard, where sometimes she rested on plants (generally somewhere I could not get a good picture of her):


And sometimes stopped on milkweed plants and laid eggs:


See how she curls her body toward the leaf? That's when she deposits the egg.

Mostly she just flew around, much to my aggravation:


Another of the eggs I saw her lay.

I have found several monarch eggs in the last few days, and have seen a lot of leaves with first-instar caterpillar damage, but aside from the one tiny caterpillar I found last week that disappeared by the next day, I have only found one other caterpillar. So a lot of them have hatched, but they are not surviving to become butterflies, or even bigger caterpillars.

 

Here's one I found yesterday. It's probably still first instar, or VERY early second. You can see how much of the leaf it has eaten at this point. Later on, this evening, I looked at it again and it had started another hole nearby.


I have a lot of milkweed in my backyard this year, it's a shame that it is not supporting a lot of monarch caterpillars.

This is the closest she let me get...

You can see that her colors are pretty faded. I think she has been around for a while. She flew kind of clumsily at times, too.


Other Bug:

Robber fly. It is feeding on some kind of prey, but I can't tell what it is.


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