Regicide?

We found a couple of Monarch butterfly caterpillars recently, both just sort of trucking along far from any Asclepia plants, their chief food source, so we transferred them to the one healthy Asclepia plant in the yard.

They both happily set to chewing away on the leaves and eventually the larger of the two set off to find a place to form a chrysalis.

Looking For A Location

The site it finally selected was the underside of a rail on one of Cindy's anti-varmint panels.

Chrysalis

That was OK; it should be fine there as long as we remember it's there.

We continued to keep an eye on the second caterpillar, but today I found it wrapped up in spider web, looking dried out and dead.

Spiders Got This One

I guess the spiders have to eat, too, but I wish they would pick on the less beneficial insects and leave the pollinators, including the Monarch caterpillars, alone.

Herding Caterpillars

Many Monarchs

We've been complaining all summer about not seeing any Monarch caterpillars, but in the last couple of weeks we've seen a number of Monarchs, but also the Giant Swallowtail caterpillar on the citrus and an Anise Swallowtail caterpillar on the parsley.

The Monarchs are all over the Asclepia plant that came up as a volunteer in the corner of the big raised bed in the back yard, but they don't seem to be able to find a good place to form their chrysalises.

The first one evidently crawled along the top of the panels until it came to the farthest corner of the bed, then went out on the twist tie that keeps the panels together to form its chrysalis.

Really?

We put a couple of stakes across the top of the panels to give the others a little more solid place to attach, but did they do that?  Nooooooo, not one of them has used it.

A Little Help?  

The second one crawled completely out of the bed and ended up attaching to the bottom of one of the patio posts.

So when we saw the third one busily crawling along the pathway in the general direction of the patio and tried to climb up the side of the water tank, we decided to try to encourage it to find a better place to attach.

No, Not There!

We finally got it on one of the blueberry bushes, where it curled into its "J" shape and formed its chrysalis.

Finally Found A Place

So we'll see if any of them hatch out successfully.

A World Without Butterflies

Gulf Fritillary

We get a lot of pleasure watching the butterflies in our garden, hopefully enjoying the various butterfly-friendly plants we've included in the garden.

The other day while I was looking in vain for Monarch caterpillars, I did see several other species, including a Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae), a Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui), a Fiery Skipper and one of the yellow Sulphur type butterflies, probably a California Dogface (Zerene eurydice), although it was moving too fast for me to get a good look at it.

I found that very encouraging after the absence of Monarch caterpillars.

Painted Lady

A world without beautiful butterflies would be too bleak to contemplate.

A Garden Without Caterpillars

Monarch Caterpillar

We've had plenty of Monarch butterflies visiting our front yard butterfly garden all summer, but until recently we had seen no Monarch caterpillars.  The Asclepia plants are all thriving this year, although by now they should have been nibbled down to bare stalks by the caterpillars.

We would think it was just our yard, but other Master Gardeners in San Diego are reporting the same problem in their gardens:  no Monarch caterpillars.

We saw two small ones about a week ago, but they are gone now.  They were both too small to have pupated already, so something is clearly still nobbling our caterpillars (I learned that word from watching the delectable British TV series Pie In The Sky).

It might be the Lesser Goldfinches, as we saw one trying to imitate a hummingbird as she attacked a huge Tomato Hornworm in the back yard a couple of weeks ago.  She wasn't afraid to go after that enormous worm, but she also didn't succeed in getting it off the tomato vine.

Another suspect is the same one we considered last year at this time:  wasps.  We haven't seen any of the Mud Dauber wasp nests this year, but the Paper Wasps in the back yard not only revived their old nest from last year, but also constructed a large three part wasp condo under the patio cover.  You would think they could have taken out that hornworm, but noooo.

One thing I don't think we'll try again is the caterpillar cage we tried last year when we were having the same problem (See Co-dependent to Caterpillars, Part II).  As the subsequent posts from October and November of last year show, that effort was pretty much of a disaster, so I think they'll just have to figure it out on their own.

We'll probably have to hire a pro to get those wasp nests down, though.

New Caterpillar

Cindy found a beautiful new Asclepia plant growing in her tomato bed the other day and then noticed two caterpillars nearby with coloring very similar to that of the Monarch caterpillar, but with a few differences.

The colors were the same dark blue, yellow-green and light green or white, but the Monarch caterpillar has solid stripes, where these had yellow dots on the dark blue instead of solid stripes of color.

Monarch Caterpillar on Asclepia

So we dug out the butterfly identification guide we had just bought, and identified them as the caterpillars of the Anise Swallowtail butterfly.

Anise Swallowtail Caterpillar

We've seen the yellow Swallowtail butterflies flittering through our veggie garden, so we know they're around.

The clincher, though, was that these caterpillars were completely ignoring the very handsome Asclepia nearby that Monarchs would be devouring, and instead were chowing down heartily on the parsley and dill, which, according to the guide, is what they prefer to eat.  

Eating That Parsley

These caterpillars should be ready to form their chrysalises soon; if we can find them, we may be able to follow their hatching as we did the Monarchs last year.

Return of the Monarchs

We've had a few butterflies of various types visit our butterfly garden in the front yard since the two Monarch caterpillars hatched out in late January (See "Mr. Upside Down Finally Hatches" and "Houston, We Have Lift-Off"), but until yesterday, only one Monarch.

Butterfly Bush

Now we have a Monarch fluttering around the yard, to the consternation of our cat Bailey, who has temporarily given up her lizard watching duties to follow the flight of the Monarch around the yard.  It's a good thing she hasn't figured out how to open the front door.

The butterflies seem to like the Butterfly Bush (Buddleia ), as well as the Yarrow, the Asclepia and even the roses.  We know the Buddleia is considered a non-native invasive species, but then so is a lot of the other stuff we seem to have growing in the yard.  It's amazing how well some things do in poor soil with little or no water.

I've read that one of the nicknames for Buddleia is "summer lilac", a name that evokes the wonderful scent of heavily laden lilacs in the Spring, a pleasure we unfortunately have to forego in San Diego; the climate doesn't have enough "chill hours" for us to grow them here.   I told one friend recently that she should consider her lilacs to be the reward for the cold, rotten winter they've had in the Midwest.  Lilacs about the only thing that makes us regret living in such a temperate climate.  Lilac scented candles just aren't the same.

We're glad the butterflies, bees and hummingbirds like the Buddleia, anyway.

Mr. Upside Down Finally Hatches

Mr. Upside Down

Mr. Upside Down, the Monarch Butterfly chrysalis we've been watching for the last month finally hatched out on Monday.  This guy was sloooowww.  He took his sweet time about the whole process, from attaching to the fence, to forming the chrysalis, to emerging from the chrysalis and finally to taking to flight.

The female Monarch (Cindy named her "Mona") who hatched out the week before was much more business-like about the process; she hatched out, flexed her wings a few times, and took off and we haven't seen her since.

Mr. Upside Down Attached

Chrysalis

Mr. Upside Down, on the other hand, stayed on the fence for several days before he attached.  Then it took several more days before he began to form his chrysalis.  He took so long about it that we began to think he was dead, but he finally got it done.

Mona hatched out of her chrysalis in 27 days; this guy took over a month.  I started watching the chrysalis last Friday, thinking he might be on the same schedule, but nothing much happened either Friday or Saturday, except that I got very tired of sitting there waiting for something to happen.

I continued to watch because I thought I probably would never get a better chance to see a butterfly emerge than this because of the very accessible position of this chrysalis on the fence.  The third chrysalis is high up in the Bougainvillea and we can barely see it.

The one thing that did happen, however, was that the chrysalis became noticeably darker and more transparent.  In fact, we were able to see the orange and black wing markings forming within the chrysalis.

Wings Forming

The chrysalis looked like a beautiful, glowing jewel whenever the sun was on it.  It also had a row of  little golden dots about a third of the way down from the top and other little gold dots in other places.  As the chrysalis darkened, another row of gold dots formed across the top of the chrysalis.

It's Starting!

By lunchtime Monday it looked like it might happen at any moment, but I was getting very tired of sitting on the overturned bucket and my hand was cramping from holding my camera.  Cindy suggested I get a more comfortable chair from the front porch.  When I brought the chair back, I noticed the chrysalis looked a little different and had in fact started to open.

Here It Comes!

Cindy and I watched in fascination as the new butterfly crawled out of the chrysalis at last.  It clung to the shreds of the chrysalis as its wings unfolded and steadily grew longer and fuller.  

Within just a few minutes the wings, which originally were shorter than the butterfly's body, lengthened  and grew longer than the body.  

He's Finally Out

He hung onto the fence for at least an hour as the wings gradually filled out and dried off.  Then he tried to climb up the fence but slipped and sort of plummeted down onto a potted salvia at the bottom of the fence.  

After a while he flexed his wings a few times, but that was pretty much it for the day--he stayed on the flower pot over night.  He flew off to the Bougainvillea the next day, but didn't venture beyond that.  It was cold, foggy and windy most of the day and he evidently didn't want to venture out into the world.  We began to worry that he might not have enough energy to get going so he could fly off and locate food, but this morning it was warm and sunny again and he was gone.  

It's A Boy!