Rose Cat's Rambles

I hadn't really expected another round of monarchs this late in the year, but the butterflies have decided otherwise. ( continued monarch and nature news, including talk of spiders and a photo of one )

Well, after what was shaping up to be a disastrous year for monarch reproduction here in the garden, I got a successful round in late summer/early autumn. I wasn’t seeing any more wasps by then, although one chrysalis appeared to have been taken by one anyway. But that's nothing compared to the awful toll the wasps took in the spring: two entire batches of caterpillars! Some of the cats that made it to the chrysalis stage succumbed to the Dread Disease, either before or during emergence, but that seems to be normal these days. I’m still trying to get my notes together for a detailed account, but if I recall correctly, at least ten butterflies made it to maturity and flew away.

What’s more, yet another group – starting with eggs in early October – has now made it to the pupal stage. I really wasn’t expecting any more this year! Although it’s not the first time they’ve bred this late, I hadn’t anticipated another try. Maybe there’s some way for the butterflies to know that they’ve had so little success that they might as well have another go at it. Apparently the monarchs have had better luck elsewhere this year. (How far away that could reasonably be, I don’t know. Eventually I’ll look into it, I’m sure.)

So, there are now eighteen chrysalises (wow!) hanging around the yard in various places. After my initial count – the usual few days of walking and crawling around the yard with my eyes peeled, plus some careful trimming of the ever-popular geraniums -- one of them vanished, leaving only a bit of the stipe (the stem from which the chrysalis hangs) behind. Some predator – a lone wasp, perhaps – must have snipped it off and carried it away.

Just a day later, however, I made one more muddy crawl to comb carefully through the long grass stems against the wood fence. There turned out to be one more chrysalis under the fence’s lowest rail, which is about 9” (23cm) off the ground. I know I’d checked that area, but not with my eyes 9” from the ground. I could sure use a shrink ray sometimes. (Then again, maybe not the best idea…)

Just before the fully-grown cats took off on their final trek, though, I counted twenty. One of them may have died. Or, maybe there’s a chrysalis still out there waiting to emerge and surprise me. That's always fun.

So, eighteen that I know of. They’re all still green, which is good, since the weather’s been mostly cold and rainy for several days. It’s warming up again. A week or so of nice warm days, and they could all turn dark, emerge as beautiful adult monarchs, and fly away to the milder coast, Mexico, or wherever they want to spend the rest of their butterfly lives.

Unless they decide to stay around and try for three? Yesterday I discovered three eggs on the milkweed. Oh, for god’s sake…

Sunday's monarch count: 14 eggs, 38 caterpillars. Approximate lengths: 2, 1mm; 6, 1.27mm; 23, 4.76mm; 2, 8mm; 3, 11.11mm; and 2, 14.28mm.

(Handy-dandy mm to inches convertor.)

I need to a) get a tiny ruler or tape in metric, so I can stop converting from inches, and b) take clearer notes as to caterpillar sizes. It took me half an hour to interpret my chicken scratches. (Bending and twisting while keeping my place on the plant stem with one hand and writing on the clipboard with the other makes me careless, especially after my back starts hurting.) There appears to be a learning curve here. Hopefully it won't take the entire cycle to get the data recording consistent.

Anyhow, I'm hoping that the drop in numbers of both eggs and caterpillars from last time (and in general) is at least as much due to bigger cats eating larger cats and eggs as to predation by wasps, diseases and so on.

And, a pleasant surprise I didn't expect: Monday, while looking around for wayward cats, I discovered a fresh green chrysalis! It was under a bench next to the hose reel, which is a good safe place where they've tended to do well. Yay, caterpillar!

In other critter news, the house wren is still popping out to make fussy noises, mostly when Missy ventures out. And an oriole has been singing in the alder tree.

Photos to come, as soon as I get my Flickr account set up.

Latest monarch count on Monday, June 17: 50 eggs, 55 caterpillars. That's 38 more cats than on the 14th, but 86 fewer eggs. Obviously not all of the eggs are going to make it to hatching, but considering that adults are still showing up to lay additional eggs, and that most of the cats this time were 3mm or less, it's not a good sign. I hadn't seen any cats last time that would have been big enough to move on to the next stage.

I found three dead caterpillars on the ground next to the pot. They'd clearly died from infection (which can have various causes), and I got rid of the bodies and tore off some milkweed leaves that had nasty infectious caterpillar juice on them. One of them had made it to around 25mm (1") before expiring. Dammit!

Anyway, eight of the cats were newly hatched at about 1mm (1/25"); the rest were around 3mm (1/8"), except for three about 25mm (1"). The larger ones, apparently the only survivors from the earlier group, were in the milkweed patch against the wall, not in the big pot. That area has, in the past, been less affected by disease and whatever else kills off caterpillars. I have no idea why. Perhaps it's got something to do with being more sheltered, even though, with less sun, the plants don't grow as big. Or maybe it's something else.

Although it concerns me that so many caterpillars are newly or recently hatched, at least they are hatching, and chomping away. Whatever killed the older ones off, maybe the second wave will do better. At least I hope so.

While I was crouching over the plants, a Cooper's hawk flew over the yard, pip-pipping, and coasted right past the palm tree where the crows are nesting. Oddly, there wasn't a peep out of them. Maybe the parents were out foraging. And a woodpecker was calling from somewhere in the neighborhood.

It's been hot and dry and a little bit windy, but the monarch caterpillars are coming along. I'm doing a few counts.

Friday, June 7: 26 eggs, 20 caterpillars. The cats ranged from approximately 3mm (1/8"), the size of a new hatchling, all the way up to one relative monster at 31.75mm (1-1/4"). Most of them were around 15.9mm (5/8"). I did see an adult butterfly sailing around the yard; it may have been a female laying eggs. Somebody certainly is!

Sunday, June 9: 87 eggs, 15 caterpillars. About three of the cats were hatchling size; the rest were from 19mm (3/4") to 25mm (1"). Two of the largest ones, now in the small bed of plants, had most likely migrated from the big pot. Maybe they were running away from the ants. I'm pretty sure the ants (which keep bringing aphids to the plants, mostly in the big pot) are responsible for there being fewer caterpillars. (Except for the large one I knelt on when I wasn't paying attention. DAMMIT.) Although the weird weather -- hot, cool, then hot again -- may be a factor.

I need to get, or make, a proper bird bath so I can liberate the saucer I've been using and put it back under the big milkweed pot. The caterpillars need a moat.

I also need a better way of measuring the cats. A metal tape measure is not a good thing to have near a soft insect, and my finger isn't very accurate. I can't find a ruler around here to save my life.

Monday, June 10: 128 eggs, 16 caterpillars. Most of the cats were in the 6.4mm to 9.5mm range (1/4" to 3/8"), but three were over 31.75mm (1-1/4"), one of which, at 44.5mm (1-3/4"), looks big enough to take off for its pupating spot. That is, if it doesn't get eaten first. There was an additional big cat dead on the ground, but it wasn't squished. Wasp, disease or ant bites? The ants were happy, anyway. It's tough out there for a caterpillar.

A female adult was visiting the plants today and laying eggs. Keep 'em coming, girls!

OMG OMG OMG. BUTTERFLIES EVERYWHERE!!!

I found three just now when I went out to check; two males and one female, all looking great and healthy! One of the males was hanging from his empty chrysalis under a bench, and I lifted him up and put him on a geranium leaf so he could soak up some sun and warm his wings up. Of the other two, a female was floundering in a patch of grass under the kitchen window, after having fallen from her empty chrysalis, but only about a foot. The other had landed on a towel I'd put below the chrysalis in case of that happening. He'd fallen from under the eaves -- about eight feet up. Both had managed to hang until they were perfectly dry, so had landed safely.

I lifted those two up and put them on another towel I'd draped over the hose box. They were relieved, I think, to get higher up and into the sun. They're basking in the sun right now, slowly opening and closing their wings, gorgeous creatures in their patterns of orange and black.

There have been butterflies in the past that have fallen onto the concrete and been fatally injured. I don't know if they'd been dry enough to have survived without damage, but ever since then, I've put something softer down when a butterfly was close to emerging.

This group started out with twenty-two healthy-looking chrysalises; a couple of the ones left are looking iffy to me, but I've been surprised before. We're down to eleven. If the weather stays reasonably warm, as it has been, the rest of them should be out in the next couple of days. And off they go. OH YAYYY!

I need to go out and get some more film, dammit.

I've been under the weather for a few days, but I'll get more details up soon about the entire winter season we've had. And pictures!

By the way, did you manage to catch the The Doctors Revisited -- The First Doctor?

I had no idea that it existed and had aired at the end of January, so I was pleasantly surprised to come across it last night, at midnight on BBC America. It was an overview of the First Doctor era, which was interesting enough, but it ended with something I was not expecting: an actual several-episode story from that era, "The Aztecs." It's one of the very few from that era that still exists (and a lot more interesting than the first, "An Unearthly Child," the only other one I've seen.) For two-and-a-quarter hours I was glued to my seat!

I don't know when it's going to repeat again (I wish the VCR had been working), but the Second Doctor one is coming up. Evidently they're going to do one for each Doctor. (I wonder what they'll do for Eight, though?)

If you don't have access to BBC America or some other source, I hope you get to see them somehow.

(If you'd like to discuss it here -- which I'd love to -- please use lj-cuts so as not to spoil anyone who hasn't seen it and doesn't want to know, please. Or big SPOILER WARNINGS at the top of the comment, or something. Thank you.)

My concerns were unfounded; both camera and macrolens appear to be A-OK. YAY! Here be photos.( Nine pics. WARNING: spiders )

I woke up at 1 PM (PST) this morning to see B looking through his T-shirts. Having washed his dress shirts the night before, my first thought was “oh shit, he just found them and they’re not dry yet.” (Uhh, casual Friday, dear?) Or maybe he was going for a walk first?

“Going for a walk, honey?”

“Um, no, my car’s still up the hill...”

(our street was resurfaced yesterday)

“…and it’s 102 outside.” (Fahrenheit, of course)

“A hundred and WHAT?! Are you kidding?”

I really thought he was kidding -- I was still under a light blanket and didn’t feel the least bit hot – but, no, he was not.

“It’s already eighty in here.”

The Santa Ana winds had arrived.

A few minutes later, B left, his work clothes in a bag. I leapt out of bed and raced outside -- almost burning my hand on the outer doorknob -- looking for a way to shade the tiny monarch caterpillars in the big milkweed pot from the blasting sun. (The last batch was lost to heat and wasps, and damned if I was going to lose another.) Reassured that I wasn’t too late by a couple of caterpillars vigorously chomping away, I put something together with patio chairs, an old tomato cage, and a towel.

Then I noticed that -- even though I’d watered them yesterday and they were in partial shade -- the milkweed plants in the ground were desperately limp. I turned on the hose and suddenly it was raining. Hard. HUH? But – the sun’s still shining, and this isn’t Seattle, and – OH. I’d been wondering when that crack in the hose was going to give way. And it felt pretty good, anyway.

It was a little awkward, though, watering with a loop of hose.

I was worried about the three large swallowtail caterpillars, but when I poured a bucket of water around the fennel plants, one of them charged out of a tuft of grass. (I hope that’s where the others were hiding.) As it climbed up the wooden fence, I worried that it was going to get too hot before it could get into the shade, so I gave it a gentle boost. It stopped dead and bobbed its head at me like a stubborn donkey or something. So I just leaned over it to keep the sun off. Eventually it got going again and got itself into the shade.

Let’s see: high temperatures, low humidity, hillsides covered with brush as dry as a bone, Santa Ana winds. All we need now is a spark.

It’s supposed to be hot tomorrow, too, but by Sunday it should be starting to cool down.

Well, it took me almost three hours, but I counted the eggs and caterpillars on the milkweed plants this evening.

In the big pot, which is approximately fifteen inches in diameter and fourteen inches tall, I counted thirty-six caterpillars and two-hundred-and-eleven eggs.

In the bed next to the house, which is about one by four-and-a-half feet and contains seven plants, I counted fourteen caterpillars and seventy-seven eggs.

Grand Total: fifty caterpillars and two-hundred-and-eighty-eight eggs.

That's a lot of baby monarchs! Keep in mind, though, that very, very few will make it to the chrysalis stage, or even to full caterpillar size. When a munching caterpillar comes across an egg or another caterpillar that's much smaller, it just keeps on eating. When the caterpillars are bigger and more the same size, they often will fight and the loser gets eaten. Yes, they're savage little things!

I once saw a large caterpillar bump into a much smaller one. The tiny one reacted immediately; it dropped suddenly, hanging from a silk line (they can extrude them just as spiders do) several inches down. Presumably it climbed back up after a while. I also noticed what I thought was a caterpillar shedding its skin. It turned out to be eating another that was almost the same size. (In both cases, I wish I'd gotten a picture.)

Oh, and the caterpillars currently range from 3/16" (about 0.5 cm) to 1/2"(.3 cm) long.

...well, not exactly. (Sorry.)

Ten monarch chrysalises in the garden today! YAYYY! *throws confetti everywhere* There may be more; I haven't crawled around at a caterpillar's-eye level to search. I think I'll have time to do it tomorrow.

( The rest of the story, and a bonus video, here. )