When the three monarch caterpillars I was hand-raising emerged from their chrysalis, I completely missed the first one. For the next two, I was ready with my camera, but one of them slipped out while I had my back turned pouring a cup of coffee! But I got the third one on video. What an education this has been!
Last Friday, July 24th, I went out into my backyard with a brick of suet for my suet feeder. Something fluttering caught my eye, and it was a monarch butterfly coming around from the side of my house into my backyard! I was transfixed, and watched in awe as it investigated my butterfly garden and swamp milkweed in the back. Then I followed it around my house as it literally checked and rechecked every milkweed plant I have in the yard! I must have circled the house 4 or 5 times, suet cake in hand, and NO CAMERA. As I’ve said many a time, my neighbors must think I’m batty, and one did actually stop her car as she drove by and asked me what I was looking at, and then she spotted the monarch for me as it circled around from the back of the house again to my side yard. I was able to get a good enough look at it to determine that it was a female, and she landed on the underside of several of my common milkweed plants before finally settling down on a butterfly weed in bloom for a bit of a drink before taking off for good.
That evening I started checking my milkweed plants for eggs and found what could be one egg, and then yesterday I found another, then two more today, all on common milkweed. They are all on leaves where I saw her land, ever so briefly. It is so hard to tell the difference between a monarch egg, which is ridged and pointed, and milkweed latex, which is a round drop, so I’m reluctant to call them all eggs, but they certainly could be. If they are eggs, they should hatch by the end of the week. Time will tell!
Here are some pictures I took with my phone, but they are a little blurry because the camera couldn’t focus well that close:
Possible monarch egg near the center of the picture. It looks a little pointed.
Another possible egg
Side view of another egg. Note how it is slightly pointed.
Fourth possible egg!
My little common milkweed patch is growing every year, and one of them looks like it is going to bloom. I think being located on the east side of my house and not getting full sun is why they have never bloomed before. Monarchs have been sighted here in northern Delaware, and I have noticed milkweed growing all over the place, along roadsides and in fields, which is very encouraging to me. So now I have started the “milkweed prowl” where I inspect my milkweed every day to see if anything is happening. Yesterday I found my first milkweed bug of the season! According to Milkweed, Monarchs, and More: A Field Guide to the Invertebrate Community in the Milkweed Patch, it is actually called a Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle (Labidomera clivicollis) and usually prefers swamp milkweed to protect it from its usual predators, but there it was on my common milkweed! I guess I’d prefer finding monarch eggs, but a milkweed beetle is better than nothing, and at least the milkweed is being used for something by a native insect!
Swamp milkweed leaf beetle
My common milkweed patch
Milkweed blossom forming!
June 1, 2015 News flash!
Yesterday while we were sitting out in the backyard enjoying the hummingbird/house wren show and watching the catbird snatch serviceberries off the tree (you know we have an exciting life!), I suddenly caught a glimpse of something orange and black from the corner of my eye. It was a monarch fluttering around my little common milkweed patch! It literally checked out every plant in the patch, then flew around the backyard and the other side of the house before returning to check the plants again. I felt like Linus hoping my milkweed patch was sincere enough for the monarch! Eventually, it flew away, but I am so encouraged that if at least one monarch has somehow found my patch, others may also find it. I’ll be checking that patch for eggs every day now for sure!
FROM WEEDS TO BEES 