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…