I found this caterpillar munching busily on my butterfly weed leaves and seed pods. I have some others on my parsley. They’re welcome to both. I don’t eat a lot of parsley and the butterfly weed is well-named–it’s taking over. And if you are going to be this pretty one day–
–you’re welcome to munch away.
I feel honored a Monarch chose my garden in which to lay its eggs. The next thing I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for is this chrysalis:
Photo: © Debbie Hadley, WILD Jersey
This page has more about Monarchs and a Monarch photo gallery. I was fascinated to read about the “Methuselah generation.”
For kids, The Children’s Butterfly Site has a child-sized helping of butterfly stuff. It also happens to be about my speed. Mostly. The coloring pages I know I can do.
And don’t miss The Butterfly Website. It has a photo gallery to help you identify your butterflies in both adult and caterpillar stages.
I hope mine make it to the butterfly stage. I haven’t seen many Monarchs in recent years. It seems they were a much more common sight back in the day.
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Monarchs are so fun. I wrote a post about our experience raising them last summer. There was too much rain this year and not too many monarchs made it all the way to Maine so we didn’t find any larvae to raise.
http://fimby.tougas.net/Raising_Monarchs
Our Monarch raising experience:
Purchase & plant in the bed by the front door: one Milkweed with 2 resident monarch caterpillars from Great House Butterfly Farm’s openhouse. One caterpillar quickly disappeared. The other made a chrysalis on the house. When I saw it I thought: “When we get home I’ll get that & pin it into a cup to mature just like we saw them doing at GHBF.” When we got home, a lizard had already sampled a bite. That winter the plant froze & did not return the following spring. Sigh.
I, too, have been raising Monarchs this summer. I have 1 about to emerge today and another that will make it’s chrysalis today. It is the most rewarding and miraculous experience! The website I use for my information is monarchwatch.org. I bring every egg I can find inside and rear them on my dining room table to help increase their numbers. I’ve heard that an egg has a 1% chance of making it to adult butterfly. The weather has indeed played a big part in their numbers this year and I want to do everything I can to help them. Enjoy yours – they will be heading southwest very soon!
nancy
Monarchwatch Waystation 3037
Cincinnati, Ohio
Thanks for sharing this story. When I was a kid in high school, we lived way out near the beach and had very few neighbors. On the way to my house from the bus stop there was a vacant lot over-grown with milkweed. I had no idea that Monarch’s loved the stuff until one day on my way home, I was thrilled to see thousands of these beauties all over that vacant lot. They were only there for the one day and I’ve never seen a sight like that since. The kid in me wanted to run through that stuff, but the thought of snakes stopped me…lol.
Have a great day!
Debbie…(O:
>
I love butterflies, I love watching them, this is a cool post!
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
Beautiful in both forms. We are seeing a few monarch butterflies around as we head into spring here in New Zealand. I’ve not seen any of the caterpillars, though I’d sure like to.
Linda–Yes, magic. Waiting for the first chrysalis . . .
Olyve–What a beautiful memory. I’ve never seen anything like that.
nancy–Wow, you are inspiring me to do more. I will check out that site and try to learn more about what to do. Neat!
37blessings–Oh no! That was unpleasant! Hope you have better results if you give it another try.
renee–Thanks, I’ll check it out!
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing this post and these wonderful photos!
I have not seen any lately, and that’s a shame. I DO know that they are very delicate creatures and protecting them can be a challenge.
The caterpillar you saw on the on the parsley should look a bit different from the Monarch caterpillar and is probably the Eastern Black Swallowtail, Papilio polyxenes, which feeds on plants in the carrot family, such as dill, fennel, parsley, Queen Anne’ Lace, bishop’s weed, etc. These creatures are also very beautiful in both life cycle phases.
Portia McCracken–I see. I didn’t know the difference. I won’t be surprised now when a Black Swallowtail emerges instead of the expected Monarch. Thank you very much!
Jen M.–Thank you. I hope these make it.
Thanks for the info on these little guys. I used them as the topic for my first “If I Had A Million Dollars Friday” post.
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