Migrating monarchs

[Johnsfolly]

Just finished reading the monarch butterfly article in the latest Conservationist. The article brought back many memories. We participated as a monarch way stop several years ago and we tagged butterflies for a couple of years. That was Olivia's first experience in rearing caterpillars to adults. We have been growing milkweeds as well as other natives like blazing stars, coneflowers, and asters for the pollinators in our neighborhood. I also have a couple of butterfly bushes as well. Their not natives, but do produce a lot of flowers for the butterflies. I noted in a different thread that this year when our milkweed was blooming that we had really poor numbers of pollinators in comparison to years past. Live had only found four monarch larvae earlier. She released those adults back in June. It looked like it might be a poor year of monarch through our yard. However, since the third week of Aug we have begun to see a greater number of monarchs and other butterflies visiting our Folly flowering way station for their migration. Livie has been finding lots of larvae and has been rearing 10 to 15 monarch caterpillars.

The last couple of days there has been a push to pupate with at least seven going into their chrysalis stage. 

Should be releasing the migrating adults in about 10 days. It always amazes me that the adults that will emerge from these late summer larvae are the ones that will head down to Mexico to a place that none of them have ever been. We have a little hope that in our little way we are helping these pollinators.

  

[Johnsfolly]

Not a monarch, but a painted lady butterfly on the butterfly bush. We used ot buy and rear these butterflies when my oldest was interested in them. Have had five or six of these guys around with two to three monarchs hitting the flowers daily as well as lots of bees. Our asters haven't started blooming. Once they do we will likely continue to see lots of pollinators.

[Flysmallie]

Was working at my moms today and found a bunch of the larvae. Should have grabbed a couple and watched the process. Would be cool to do a time lapse of the whole process. 

[Johnsfolly]

It's pretty cool to see their growth and pupation through to adulthood. I would do the time lapse if we had the equipment. 

[Gavin]

Have a bunch in the back yard now.

 

[Johnsfolly]

Livie got her first emergent adult today. A male monarch. We have 10 or 11 more chrysalis' left.

And off he goes. Several more should emerge over the next 6 to 7 days.

 

[Johnsfolly]

Since my last post, most of the butterflies have emerged and have been released. So far we have released 6 more females and 5 male monarchs. In case you don't know how to identify males from females, here are some examples:

Livie holding a male monarch. On the rear wings there is a black spot on each wing. You can see that on the black line closest to its abdomen.

Here is a female monarch and note that there is a lack of the black spot.

We still have four chrysalis' and four larvae getting ready to pupate.

[Johnsfolly]

We are done rearing monarchs for this season. Livie ended up releasing 8 female and 7 male monarchs. Five butterflies never emerged from the chrysalis. Surprised that we had one of best season in terms of butterflies reared and released especially since it seemed like they didn't start laying eggs until later this year. We did get a first this year, a major hatch of milkweed tussock moths (also known as milkweed tiger moths). First picture is just after they hatched.

This guy is getting fattened up and is almost ready to pupate. They don't like to eat too much of the latex like the monarchs, so they cut the veins close to the stem to allow the latex to drain before they eat the leaves.

I found out that they overwinter in their cocoons. So it will be next spring before we see any adults from this hatch.

[SpoonDog]

Nice work.  I threw some swamp milkweed seeds in the ditch last fall and this season they sprung up with about a dozen monarch caterpillars.  I didn't realize they'd march uphill towards the house and pupate on the eaves, still had about a dozen make the transition before heading on south.  Pretty neat to watch, definitely one of those things that makes you feel pretty small, realizing this little bug's gonna make a couple-thousand mile trip.