Butterfly Gardening and Conservation Blog

Second set of Monarch eggs!

Yesterday a Monarch was hanging around, nectaring on purple Milkweed (another plant I need a page for!) and laying eggs everywhere. That's the second set this year. Which is really good for me, I don't usually even see any Monarch eggs in my garden until late July or August - and now this is the second set already!

I have been bad about updating this again lately though. I've seen a few butterflies the past couple weeks and I meant to record it here so I would have an accurate record of my first sightings of various species each year - but I didn't. What I have seen the past couple of weeks for the first time is a Hackberry, Painted Lady and a Silver Spotted Skipper. The Painted Lady was sunning itself and nectaring on Scabiosa. Not that it had that many choices, not much is blooming yet. The butterfly bushes are close though!

I have seen a number of white and sulfurs too, that I couldn't identify. And occasionally, a Tiger Swallowtail.

No other eggs, except I suspect I had some other Black Swallowtail eggs laid at some point, as once I saw a nearly full grown caterpillar and a really small one at the same time, there must have been some other eggs laid since those that I reported here.

weather slowly getting better

The weather has been getting better here. Last Sunday, 5/8 I saw a Red Admiral resting near by false nettle patch. I was out of town a lot this week though. I did see a Tiger Swallowtail fly past today, but it is supposed to start raining here soon.

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update - it never did rain - didn't see any more butterflies though. oh wait, one of my black swallowtails that was overwintering emerged today and flew away, couldn't see if it was male or female.

Is summer here for real yet?

It has been rainy and cool and cloudy the past couple of weeks, so no butterflies. But, it now has started warming up again. So hopefully more butterflies will be around soon. I did see a Tiger Swallowtail flying around in the garden today though!

The Monarch caterpillars from the female who laid some eggs here a while back are around the second instar stage. There's bunch of them too!

I didn't look around too much for the Black Swallowtail caterpillars yet, but I did see one.

There may be one or more American Lady caterpillars too, its hard to say though since the make nests and are hidden in them, but it looks like there could be some small nests there.

-- Just saw the first hummingbird at our feeder for this year!