Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Do you have a butterfly mating picture?, 1 by beckygardener

beckygardener wrote:
Well ...... I have had quite a lot of Monarchs eclosing lately and of course I have had a couple that had deformed wings. (It's just the odds.) Anyway, 2 were females. Feeling sorry for them that they couldn't fly away, I put them out on the flowers of the milkweed to sip nectar (which they enjoy!). Anyway, along comes this large male Monarch gliding around my garden. Suddenly he makes a beeline right for one of the females on the flowers. He was very aggressively trying (and succeeding) to mate with her!

I'm not too happy, because she will never fly, so I'd rather not have more eggs. Plus when a Monarch isn't healthy, neither are the offspring. I was trying to shoo him away, but he had a one track mind. Finally I pick him off the flower (with her attached). They (meaning him, too) got to spend the night in my cage! Dumb Monarch!! So of course, they were already mating! Drat!!!! They need to understand that I don't run that kind of establishment! lol One night stand motel...... HA!

Anyway, kind of funny ...... in the morning when I went to check on them, they had seperated and he was flipping out to realize that he was trapped in a cage. I, of course, stuck my hand in the cage to get him to release him, but it took me awhile because he was scared to death of me. Apparently, not one that I raised. LOL

Here's a photo. I ran inside to get my camera thinking he'd be gone .... oh no! Very persistent male!



This message was edited Dec 24, 2006 11:09 AM