Migration Time!

The summer is pretty quiet on the butterfly front in South Texas. Most of the action is happening further north until the fall migration starts, around August - and then BOOM! A couple of females will show up and the next thing you know, there are eggs everywhere!

Well, welcome to August!

A few weeks ago, I looked outside to see a female hanging out in the milkweed garden. I went out and there were about 60 eggs! I brought them in and the fun began.

For the next few days, I closely watched the garden. There are a few telltale signs that you missed some of the eggs. The best sign of this is when you see tiny holes and what looks like black dust on the leaves.


Then comes the scary part for me... Putting the tiny babies out in the enclosure on a potted plant and waiting. They are so hard to see when they are that little, so it is best to leave them alone and wait until they are visible to make any changes to the habitat. Next thing you know, just a couple of weeks later, they will be huge!

Over the last couple of months, a young friend of mine has taken an interest in raising monarchs. Her mom and dad are my friends and I sent a couple of chrysalises home with her to release when they eclosed. Since then she has been growing milkweed and built her own enclosure. I have been very proud of her dedication and I sent her a couple of 1st instars to raise on her own. I knew that this could be a hard thing to keep up with for a teenager, especially with the school year beginning. I am excited to say that she kept both alive and they J'ed last night!

These are a couple of pics of her journey:

I will post an entry about her butterflies once they eclose. Something she and I noticed was that hers grew much more slowly than mine. I believe that to be due to the different environment that they were raised in. My enclosure is outside whereas hers is inside. The cooler temps seem to slow the growth. I had 12 eclose this morning from the same batch, but hers just began pupating. 

This morning my son and I released 12 - 4 female and 8 male! 

We should have many, many more over the next week or so. There are still about 40 chrysalises left and a few 5th instars getting ready to climb up. Being that it is August, we also have about 50 eggs in the kitchen, waiting to hatch and be moved outside one the big guys all climb up. 

 

 No matter how often we do this, I am always in awe of how beautiful these creature are and how trusting they can be. I am also amazed at how gentle my little one can be - he is the one who generally releases all of our butterflies. 

   

Thanks for stopping by - more to come about the August influx! We also have a teacher who is planning to raise some with her second grade class! And if we are extra luck, maybe my kindergarten butterfly master can take some for his class as well!

Some more pictures of today's releases

The giant milkweed is my very favorite - the purple flowers are so unique and I have notices a lot of hummingbird activity. My little guy and I decided that the new butterflies would likely love it as much as we do.