Monarchs Monarchs Everywhere!!

About 2-1/2 weeks ago my first Monarch of the season flew into my yard. She immediately started laying eggs on my milkweed. This continued for 3 days in a row. She came the same time every afternoon. I started collecting a few of the eggs right away but then decided to wait to see what hatched on the plants. Before I knew it I had 21 monarch cat babies!! I knew I wouldn't have enough milkweed to feed them all so I brought 7 to my girlfriend who also raises cats and 8 of them I gave to the lady who heads the butterfly club meeting I attend monthly. She told me if I needed more Milkweed to let her know as she has alot of it. That left me with 6 cats which I figured I had enough milkweed for.
That was last Sunday and during the course of this past week I ended up finding 10 more monarch cats. So now I am back up to 16 :) Luckily I picked up a few more milkweed plants on Saturday at a local master gardeners plant sale. I have a few that should be almost done eating...at least I hope so LOL

Just a few pictures of the cats and the cage my husband built for me as a Christmas present. I also included a pic of my lone Gulf Fritillary cat which came along with a passion vine plant I won at the butterfly meeting raffle. I also have 1 GF cat in a chrysalis which should be hatching soon.

Lisa

My Gulf Fritillary Cat

Lisa

My butterfly cage.
it has a drawer where the orange butterfly knob is and that is where I keep my small cup and supplies

Lisa

Nice work Lisa... Welcome to the world of conservation!! & Thank YOU!! We need all the conservationists we can get!!


How fine is the screen on the cage? (I ask because of the tiny predators that can find your cats. They are tiny wasps that can fit through standard sized screen.)

*Look up Chalcid Wasp....

Debnes

Thanks Debnes!!
Wow never heard of those kind of wasps! My cage is inside my screen room which has fine screening on it. And the cage screen is pretty small. I've been doing this for a year now and haven't seen anykind of pests at all near my cage. But I will be sure to keep an eye out for anything.
Thanks for the heads up!

Lisa

Good Lisa!
This is something we all encounter eventually and it is such a blow when it does. Sounds like you have it all pretty safe though! Again, Super job you're doing!!

Please feel free to post your dailies in the community daily butterfly thread any time too! The season is picking up for just about everyone as we head toward May..

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/832885/

Debnes

Your butterfly house is superb. I purchased an inexpensive screened tubuar shaped house when I lived in Orlando, but I also had cats outside on milkweed plants and the wasps were a real problem. Once the cats get to a certain size, the wasps seem to leave them alone, but they'll strip the leaves bare of eggs or tiny cats. Our little screened house was inside our pool enclosure, like yours, giving it double protection. Never lost a one in there.

Thank You for your nice comment on my butterfly cage Pamgarden! :)
And thanks for sharing your experience with leaving your cage in your pool enclosure !

Lisa

Here's one of my "babies". I've just got it in a small clear plastic container with a paper towel held on the top with a very large rubber band.

Aww! aren't they cute Linda!
Mine have started to pupate. I lost 2 that started but never finished. They just had a little green "hat" on and that was it. A few others just started to "J" last night and today so I will see what happends with them. Keeping my fingers crossed!
And another Monarch was laying eggs on my milkweed yesterday, so I will have more babies soon if they hatch :)

Lisa

I drive down the highway and these country roads around my house and see tens, nay hundreds, of yellow swallowtail butterflies perilously crossing the roads, flying headlong into the windshields of oncoming semis, lying in a crumpled heap on the side of road, and not a one in my garden. Oh, they fly over, but they don't stay. I finally have acres of space for homeless hoards of swallowtails, monarchs, blues, sulphurs, and any others that would like to drop by. What I don't have yet is sufficient beds for the nectar flowers and host plants they want. We had a weedy old mimosa tree down at the cottage that acted as a beacon for hummers, black, and yellow swallowtails, and every manner of small and large bee, but it had a serious case of the leans and it had to be taken down earlier this spring. It was amazingly heavy, making a loud thud and a dent in the earth when it fell. It wasn't a pretty tree, but I will miss it greatly. It was a thrill to walk down just to hear the activity of all those lovely ephemeral flying things. There is common milkweed growing out in the meadow (maybe it's a field. I like the word meadow) and some bachelor buttons and buttercups and a few other white wildflowers. Perhaps they will create a draw.

Yesterday, I was on an old twisted road that I hadn't known existed. It was a little lane cut deeply into the mountain, providing a heavily shaded wall on either side covered with small and medium ferns. As I came around a curve in the road, I was at eye level with a huge field. Tall leafy trees were the far off background, some fresh green and others with a hint of color, acre upon acre of knee high grass swayed in the breeze, and above the grass a thousand butterflies darted and swooped in the sunshine. It is definitely not a short cut to my destination, but I will go that way again and hope to have a similar experience, although I know that same scene can never be duplicated exactly. It was a moment in time.

Here in Texas, such a beautiful sight would before long be followed by the sight of lots of major construction equipment and piles of bulldozed trees as developers just love to turn scenic splendor and native plants into parking lots, buildings and subdivisions. Sorry, that's just a sore spot with me. So glad you have the milkweed and flowers in the meadow. If you have native plant organizations in your state, find out if you can get seeds or plants to help you restore the property with natives. I read something lately about butterflies mostly preferring native plants.

That sounds so lovely. In Florida, like Texas, we would be paving over it. I see the developers building on wetlands so any area that's high and dry is a prime target. I'm reading a book on how to attract butterflies and hummingbirds to your garden, and she mentions how we build our homes in the suburbs so we can enjoy nature, but we remove a lot of the things that "nature" needs. And yes, one of those things is native plants. When I go hiking in the preserves, I try to learn what the plants are that I see the most butterflies on. Then, I'll see if I can purchase it or something in the same family, perhaps even a hybrid if that's easier to come by. The Florida Native Plant Society is a regular vendor at the USF plant sales and they always get some of my money - along with a lot of other people! In fact, at the spring sale I was wandering around their area and there were two ladies with a list of host plants for butterflies discussing what they needed to buy.

Melanie

It's as true here as in FL and TX that areas of rare natural beauty are being paved over. There are still many farms, large and small here, some that have been in families for generations. I drove another long country road that I hadn't been on before and noticed one 'for sale' sign after the other. I wondered why do all these people want to leave, it's so beautiful. Later it occured to me that the county has just reassessed property, and the owners, whose wealth is in the land, may no longer be able to afford it. I feel fortunate to be here while there is still so much natural beauty.