Still to this day, you cannot help but smile when glancing into the butterfly house and seeing another successful hatch. We have now raised and released 177 monarch butterflies.
As always, here’s my page with more information and photographs about the monarch butterfly https://bit.ly/3Qrrs7A.
Today No. 176 was released from our butterfly house, a beautiful male monarch butterfly.
This beauty hung out for a while before we put it on a flower, letting it decide when it wanted to fly away.
My daughter letting the newly hatched monarch butterfly and a caterpillar found in the garden, now a resident of the butterfly house, crawl on her arm.
As always, here’s my page with more information and photographs about the monarch butterfly https://bit.ly/3Qrrs7A.
A favorite find, lady bugs. They are beginning to devour the oleander aphids, a non-native pest that multiply way too quickly, on my milkweed plants. Often times if there are too many I will cut back the milkweed to allow it to grow healthy again.
This resident of our butterfly house decided to make its chrysalis on a leaf, which the other caterpillars ate down to nothing. Luckily this guy was able to complete its chrysalis without being bothered.
Just as one monarch caterpillar was completing its chrysalis, we added another caterpillar to the butterfly house, which was found on a milkweed chewed down to the stem.
As always, here’s my page with more information and photographs about the monarch butterfly https://bit.ly/3Qrrs7A.
A gulf fritillary’s egg is yellow and can be found on either the maypop passion vine (pictured above), or the corky stem passion vine, both of which are the host plant for this butterfly.
The egg will hatch three to five days after being laid. The caterpillar will spend up to 16 days eating.
Check out my page to learn more about the gulf fritillary and all of its stages from egg to butterfly at https://bit.ly/3vMyhbM.
