My wife has been keeping an eye on a chrysalis on the neighbor’s garage, and this morning it looked like this:
Empty! Where did the former resident go? It was stretching and warming itself up on a twig down below.
We have to celebrate every single monarch that emerges, because they’ve become too uncommon nowadays.
My parents (North Otago, NZ) had to form a monarch butterfly taxi consortium over the summer because there were more caterpillars than plants across the province. They saved them all though! It was a hell of a season.
badland – Kudos to your parents for saving the caterpillars!
Good to know monarchs are thriving in their area.
This summer I didn’t see many monarchs, but I’m planning to plant more milkweed and native plants next season.
Fantastic! Well done.
I used to walk home through a literal cloud of them at on patch of milkweed and now I see one a year at most. I might as well eat the milkweed in the back yard myself.
The neighbor’s garage? Was this the garage that started the myth of immigrants stealing pets?
(Colbert just explained the cat ‘Miss Sassy’ had been stuck in a garage a couple of days and the owners naturally assumed the immigrant neighbors had taken her, so they called the police)
I’ve seen more Monarchs, bats and hummingbirds this year than the last 5 years combined. Granted, single digit numbers, but still…
The Monarch Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, CA is just a few miles from my house.
The Monarchs will soon begin to arrive and many of them will remain here for the winter, while others will travel to other sanctuaries further south. I love to travel through the path in the sanctuary in my wheelchair.
It’s a gorgeous sight to look up to see thousands of them in the trees overhead.
We’ve had a couple of great years, with large numbers of them.
I hope that his year will be another good one.
PS, we’re having a banner year with sea lions this year. Some of our beaches have had to be closed to human traffic because the sea lions are coming up to the recreation trail. They seem to be amused by the humans standing behind the temporary fences to watch them as they frolic. I’m not sure just who is putting on a show for whom.