First monarch activity of the year.
Feb. 15th, 2012 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rose_catA monarch butterfly sailed around the yard last week. I wondered about her sex until she landed on the milkweed and started laying eggs.
Yesterday I crawled around on the ground counting eggs. There's a small patch with ten rather skimpy plants, one plant in a small pot, and a large pot with so many plants it looks like a milkweed forest. (I'll try to get more precise measurements soon. I'm not going out in the rain right now.)
I counted nine in the patch, eleven in the pot, and nineteen in the forest, for a total of thirty-nine. It's cold and rainy (although the rain doesn't seem to bother caterpillars), and, from my past experience, awfully early in the year for monarchs to breed successfully here. I don't know whether the eggs and caterpillars are more likely to be eaten by predators, more susceptible to disease, both, or who knows what. But, for whatever reason, the early round just seems to vanish. I guess we'll see what happens.
Did everyone who celebrates it have a nice Valentine's Day?
Yesterday I crawled around on the ground counting eggs. There's a small patch with ten rather skimpy plants, one plant in a small pot, and a large pot with so many plants it looks like a milkweed forest. (I'll try to get more precise measurements soon. I'm not going out in the rain right now.)
I counted nine in the patch, eleven in the pot, and nineteen in the forest, for a total of thirty-nine. It's cold and rainy (although the rain doesn't seem to bother caterpillars), and, from my past experience, awfully early in the year for monarchs to breed successfully here. I don't know whether the eggs and caterpillars are more likely to be eaten by predators, more susceptible to disease, both, or who knows what. But, for whatever reason, the early round just seems to vanish. I guess we'll see what happens.
Did everyone who celebrates it have a nice Valentine's Day?
