Monarchs

Its that time of year when I start regularly scouting the milkweed patches, looking for Monarch eggs and larvae. The eggs are tiny. I use a 10X eye loupe to examine any little yellowish bump I find. The eggs look like tiny bee hives, only the striations are vertical, rather than horizontal. Monarchs have always fascinated me.

They were very scarce where we lived before we moved here in 2017. The summer before we moved up, I saw just 2. What a delight to see them here in numbers that first summer! Last year, the first Monarch butterfly came floating across the front lawn on May 28. I was so surprised that I had to check with binoculars to be sure. As the season progressed, there were so many Monarch larvae feeding in the milkweed patches, sometimes more than one on just one leaf, that the plants were looking ragged and tattered, even from a distance.

I collected a couple of larvae and raised them to adulthood in a big jar with cheesecloth for a lid. The day that one of the darkened chrysalises split, and the brilliantly coloured adult emerged, I watched the process. The new Monarch, with its crumpled wings, clung to the chrysalis shell, and slowly the wings expanded as hemolymph was pumped through them. It began to periodically open and close its wings, expanding them into black and orange perfection.

Last summer, after diligent searching, I found an egg, and successfully raised it to adulthood, something I'd never done before. The tiny, pearlescent baby worm with the black head was in the 'nursery' one morning, and it gradually grew and grew, going through its 'in star' stages, until it transformed into a chrysalis, and finally into a beautiful adult.

This summer, I didn't see my first Monarch until June 14, and there are no where near the numbers around as there were last summer.