WARNING! LONG VIDEO AND PHOTO LADEN DIARY!! PLEASE SET ASIDE TIME TO ENJOY
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Since experiencing hummingbirds visiting my garden (visibly and regularly) for the first time in 2013, I was determined this year to plant a garden of flowering plants, vines and shrubs to lure the flying jewels in. You see, even though I have been happily blessed with hummingbird spotting, it’s only during the end of the season as they prepare to migrate south that I see them with any regularity. Typically, hummingbirds will show up at the feeders for me around late August or more predominantly in September and through October (and November if it stays warm enough for stragglers). Seeing them flitting about my garden gives me such pleasure that it was my aim to expand their visiting time hopefully to include from the start of Spring and through Fall, when ruby throated hummingbirds spend their time in my area.
On top of what was already in the garden, I planted sage, salvia, milkweed. Cleome, fuchsia, cuphea. Weigela, native honeysuckle, passionflower vine. Butterfly bush, bouvardia tenuifolia, caryopteris. I planted almost everything I could find that was labeled “hummingbird attractor”. And this year the crape myrtle has bloomed magnificently, starting a little earlier than usual and lasting longer than usual.
As things began to blossom and bloom, I got bees. And bees. And more bees. All sizes and types. I got other numerous pollinators - wasps, various flies, and hornets. They all were clamoring over the overabundance of flowering plants and vines. In the heat of the day, going out into the garden means I hear the busy buzzing which zips by and around loudly as I’m weeding. Human body not good to snack on, they go back to their nectar sipping and pollen foraging after spinning around me a couple of times. Oh. And yes, I do love bees, so I’m not complaining about the increased number of bees I sighted this year!
But!!! No hummers in sight. :(
On August 17, I found a ¾ inch monarch caterpillar crawling up the stem of one of the many milkweed plants I have throughout the yard. I had spotted a couple of monarchs fluttering around the yard clearly laying eggs and had been on the lookout for hatchlings, so to see a caterpillar so large, I then went on the egg hunt.
I didn't have to go far. There were eggs to the right of me, eggs to the left of me. The monarch ladies were busy laying eggs on every milkweed plant in my yard. Milkweed in the frontyard, milkweed in the backyard, milkweed I had in pots. Milkweed growing in the flower beds past bloom. Tropical and Native Milkweed were both hosts for the eggs.
For understanding, my tiny suburban property, which is on the southern side of Long Island, NY, I don’t normally see monarchs until about mid to late July. They usually start showing up at the same time that the butterfly bush is blooming. I am now realizing the butterflies I would see in my yard at this time are likely 3rd generation monarchs. It’s the 3rd generation monarchs that reproduce to bring forth the super-generation or 4th generation monarchs, the ones that will fly south and onward to Mexico to winter over.
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Egg Hunting Hints
First — look for the sign of egg laying female monarchs!
From my experience observing black swallowtail butterflies (and raising these for a number of years over the decades, pulling in caterpillars hatched late in the season before frost hits and then allowing them to winter over after pupating inside and releasing in the Spring), there is definitely a certain type of flight flutter that egg laying butterflies do. They will fly and land on plants briefly, flutter up, go to another part of the plant or to another. They’re not landing on flowers to feed and sip nectar and lounge about in the sun. They’re busy non-stop moving butterflies flying with a purpose. Since milkweed is a host plant for monarchs, if you’re seeing this type of activity around your milkweed, likely you’ve got a female laying eggs. If you look more closely, you will see the bottom end of her abdomen curling forward as she lays a single egg at a time.
Once you see this occurring, go on an egg hunt. Look under leaves. You’ll find little tiny white eggs. The underside of leaves are where most are laid. I have found them, too, on the stems of flowers. A place not likely an egg will survive and hatch.
In about 3-4 days, look at the plants where you’ve noted damage on the plant leaves — like small holes. When the caterpillar hatches, they will begin to munch on the milkweed leaf where it hatched.
From my experience with raising black swallowtail caterpillars, I’ve also found that if you want to raise caterpillars inside, it’s usually more successful to let the eggs hatch naturally outside on the plant, and then collect caterpillars, rather than eggs, to bring inside. I think this has a lot to do with the change of humidity outside vs humidity (or lack of) inside. Also, unless you’re bringing in the entire plant with eggs on it, as the leaf wilts, I’m not sure how likely the egg may hatch. I suppose if you’re bringing in a leaf when the egg is on the verge of hatching (like the same day) you’ll have a successful hatching, but I just have found it more successful overall to collect caterpillars to bring in and not leaves with eggs. The only eggs I had that hatched inside were those that existed on a plant I brought inside. But not all eggs on those plants I brought inside hatched because I had hungry caterpillars! And it could be that many of those eggs got eaten as the leaves were eaten.
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The Caterpillar Crib
Excited with this new venture of raising monarch butterflies, I knew the exact habitat that would work best (drawing from my experience raising black swallowtail butterflies). A chameleon cage. I saw chameleons set up in a pet store earlier this summer and was admiring them. One of the people who worked there explained to me that chameleons needed a lot of air flow — and thus why the best set up was a screen cage and not a glass tank with a screen top. What popped into my head at the time (and this is prior to me knowing that monarch caterpillar eggs would be hatching in my yard!) was — wow. This would make a GREAT cage to raise caterpillars!
The cage is 16X16X30. A perfect size to accommodate a small pot with milkweed plants or a cup filled with water and milkweed cuttings resting in it. This cage is made by ZooMed.
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The Very Hungry Caterpillar
(no not the book)
The caterpillars are voracious. While they are small, it may appear that you don’t have to worry about making sure there are available milkweed leaves for them to feast on, but over the days, these caterpillars will be growing at a rapid rate. They will be moving from instar to instar, or stages of growth. With Monarchs, there are five instars. They will eat and eat and eat. The periods of time they stop eating are the times they prepare to molt since their old skin limits them to their size.
When they’ve grown large enough, they will begin to wander. They’re looking for a place to pupate. In my set up, I put tall bamboo stakes for them to climb up since the plants I had in the cage were not tall enough to reach top.
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Pupating
Watching a caterpillar pupate is fascinating. This one filmed below is the 5th one to pupate. How to look for signs of the change. See the “horns”? And how they’re very twisted? Prior to this and as the caterpillar is hanging upside down in the “J” shape, you will see the horns deflate and twist, but then reinflate and look straight. What you need to look out for is that the body will begin to relax into a looser “J” and the very limp horns are even more twirled and twisted. The caterpillar will go very still, and right before pupating, the body will begin to ripple and pulsate to shed it’s last skin as a caterpillar.
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Even after fully pupating, you can see movement inside the chrysalis as it settles down for a nap.
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The outer shell begins to firm up and harden over the next hour or so. It then takes on more of the form and shape that most people recognize as a monarch chrysalis.
I had collected 10 caterpillars over time, with two eggs hatching the same day I had brought in some plants. So there were 12 in all eating their way towards butterfly-hood. One pupated successfully, but I found it on the floor of the cage. :(
All the caterpillars seemed to congregate on one side of the cage (sun-wise, it was the less sunny side of the cage — the afternoon sun coming in more directly from the left side of this photo). What I couldn’t capture in one photo was a lone 11th chrysalis that actually pupated on the left side of the cage. Here you can count 10.
While all of mine in this first batch of caterpillars pupated at the top of the cage, in the second batch of caterpillars I brought in one decided to pupate off the underside of a leaf (I did see it wander to the top of the cage, but it wandered back down)
I was a little concerned… wondering what will happen if the other caterpillars want to eat this leaf? I had to leave that morning after finding that this one had tucked itself at this location, and when I came back later that morning…
Since all of the previous chrysalis had attached themselves to the top of the screened cage, I never got to see the top view without peering through the screening.
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Emerging Transformed
After about a week as a chrysalis, I noticed that some darkening in the first two chrysalis formed. Internet observations and documents say this can occur anywhere between 9-14 days after pupating. The slight darkening begins to show a few days before reaching this stage below.
Seeing live a monarch butterfly emerge from its chrysalis is a true moment of awe. Actually, it took some time for me to catch seeing the butterfly emerge from the very beginning. I kept missing the absolute first moment of emerging by a minute or a few seconds, even after holding steady vigil for hours. It took just a minute of me being distracted (ie, begging-for-a-treat-cats) or my head turned away when I’d turn back to see the butterfly already hanging emerged. By the 5th butterfly to emerge (and coincidentally this is the same pupating in the video above), I was finally able to video it in entirety and also to observe the whole process in detail.
Signs to look for:
While my filming isn’t steady (handheld iphone propped up against side of cage), the chrysalis begins to pulse, like a very very barely visible thrust. Also, the head begins to move inside. It’s from the head that the push to break open the chrysalis shell occurs. When you see movement of the head inside, the rest of the breaking out and emerging occurs very quickly.
From this point onward, the wings expand rather quickly and the butterfly will hang quietly, periodically moving it’s wings gently, like a stretch. Generally, when I see more fluttering movement from the butterfly about 4 hours later, that is when I will move them outside. Since I have very interested cats who are supreme bug catchers, I transfer butterflies outside via a plastic cup — just so they don’t take off and fly around the house! Once outside, they easily climb onto my fingers. I usually place them onto a flowering plant and from there they’ll take their first sips of nectar.
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when they are ready to go…
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Left behind
Since I began writing this diary, all eleven that hung at the top of the screen as chrysalis’ emerged and were set free. Ten more caterpillars have been collected. Not that I was actually looking for these, but simply came across them as I was weeding and then looking up. Six were found all at once, about 2 days after hatching from their appearance, on the same native milkweed plant. I knew that single plant (only planted this year) would not support all six to chrysalis size — the plant wasn’t that big and it is planted far away from any other milkweed, so I collected these caterpillars. The other four also were happenstance findings.
Hopefully if these all make it to butterflies, I will have contributed 21 super generation butterflies to join their siblings raised in the garden and the migrating kaleidoscope.
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If you’ve read this far — some more!
Side notes if you’re planning on making this wonderful journey yourself!
Some tips I found helpful —
Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ While I have plenty of milkweed outside that I could cut and bring in daily, I have so much that has self-seeded, that it was very easy for me to dig these up, put them in pots as plants and let the caterpillars feast from the live plant. This way, the leaves don’t wilt and also it’s easier to maintain than to constantly have to clean out wilted leaves and then check to make sure you’re not tossing out any caterpillars still clinging on them. My protocol on this was dig up plants, (I had plenty of seedlings that were 8 -12 inches high) plant them. Keep the planted pots outside while the milkweed recovered from being dug up and replanted. And then trade out the pots as the plants got nibbled down to nubs. Put the nibbled down plants back outside in pots to let them recover and leaf out again. All of these seedlings are likely tropical milkweed, but I can’t be certain since most of the seedlings do look similar.
Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ When I had to cut milkweed from outside to bring in to feed the caterpillars, native milkweed holds up better to cutting and sticking in a cup of water and doesn’t wilt as quickly (ie, incarnata and speciosa).
Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Plastic cups used for cold drinks with a lid are great for holding cut milkweed. Stick the stem in where you’d stick the straw!
Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ If you have milkweed sprouting in your yard (1st year seedlings), you can gently pull them up with roots and not plant it, but put it into a cup of water. Afterwards if you’d like, you can easily plant these up in soil (which is what I did).
Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ I thought ideally setting the caterpillar cage under the skylight would be perfect. I wouldn’t have to worry about providing an extra light source for the milkweed plants in pots. But while the light is filtered from above (frosted glass), and when I found that as the caterpillars were wandering to find a place to pupate, lots of light was contrary to their natural desire to find a sheltered shady spot. So I wound up covering the top screen with paper — lifted by folded and tented paint chip cards to allow air flow and so that the silk pad footing would not stick to any of the paper (in case paper needed to be moved).
Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ If you need to move caterpillars from stems eaten down to fresh plants or cuttings. I used either a wooden chopstick or a thin bamboo stick. Gently tap the back end… and roll from the back end to the front. The caterpillar’s natural inclination will be to roll up onto the stick. To place do the reverse, gently slip a leaf edge under the front end… the caterpillar’s natural reaction will be to crawl forward onto the leaf.
Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ This is something from my observation. Milkweed that also hosted the milkweed beetle had fewer caterpillars and I could therefore see less leaf damage even though I also knew I had spotted quite a number of eggs laid on those plants. Milkweed beetles feed off of milkweed seeds so they, too, are attracted by flowering milkweed and you’ll find young instars clustered on seed pods. I found more surviving caterpillars, therefore, on native plants that were past bloom and pods already dried and seeds dispersed.
One thing about planting both tropical and native milkweed is that the tropical milkweed seems to first draw in the monarchs for their blooms and nectar, so the tropical type serves its purpose as well. Especially valuable is that I am seeing nectar feeding monarchs right now — likely those that have hatched and grown and emerged in the garden from the caterpillars I left behind. The monarchs are sipping nectar from these tropical milkweed, especially since the butterfly bush are mostly past bloom because we’ve been in a drought situation. There are other nectar sources from the plentiful flowers still blooming (ie, pentas, lantana, salvia, cuphea), but these other plants are mostly surrounded by bumblebees.
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Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ and if you have the stamina to watch another butterfly emerging from the chrysalis — this one shows a perfect visual vantage:
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PS — the Hummers DID arrive. I get no photos of them at the feeders because they’re too busy sipping nectar from the flowers. Hmm…
☺☺☺ Thanks for stopping by and reading this tome of a diary. No words can be expressed in capturing the emotional experience throughout this journey. I started out wanting to see sparkling green and red jewels zooming around the flower garden and found instead what forced me to slow down and be patiently observant. It's a lesson I need to apply in my own life’s breath.
Happy gardens!