The Nature of Things

Queen butterflies continue to flood my backyard with their beauty. I counted around a dozen today. It is impossible to get a completely accurate count, because they just won't stand still for it. They are indeed lovely and I never tire of watching them. But in addition to the Queens, I'm seeing an increase in the numbers of Monarchs passing through the garden. The Monarchs like the almond verbena, too. And as the Monarchs pass through on their way to Mexico, they are leaving me gifts in the form of their eggs. I've been finding caterpillars on my milkweed plants over the last few days. These two were quite large when I first saw them. When I checked on them a couple of days later, they were gone - already moved on to form their chrysalises I'm sure.  There was a smaller sibling still on the plant. The chrysalis of the Monarch is as striking as the butterfly or the caterpillar. In this one you can see the butterfly already almost fully formed and ready to emerge. I'm...

Female Monarch visiting the milkweed in my garden this week.  November has been a very good month for viewing Monarch butterflies in my garden. All of 2017 has, in fact, been a good year for them. All year long there has been a constant stream of the beautiful butterflies visiting my flowers, but in November, that stream became a torrent as fall migration picked up and millions of them headed toward the mountains of Mexico for their winter.  That's not just my observation. All across the continent, butterfly watchers have been reporting increased sightings of Monarchs this year. It seems the population is on the rise again. The real crunch, though, comes in the winter. Recent winters have been devastating to Monarchs because of a combination of nasty weather and illegal logging in the mountains where they spend the winter. The insects are actually capable of surviving fairly cold temperatures but when those temperatures are combined with prolonged inclement weather, that can b...

For the last few years, the news about the Monarch butterfly has been unrelentingly bad. A disastrous series of bad winters in the mountains where the migrants spend that season in Mexico, coupled with habitat loss across North America and the profligate use of pesticides in farming operations in the heartland of America, had reduced the butterfly's numbers to dangerously low levels. Some wondered if the charismatic insect would ever be able to recover, or would it follow the path of the Passenger Pigeon to extinction?  A massive effort was undertaken to educate the public and especially farmers and gardeners about the needs of the fragile fliers. All across the continent, people who had never heard of milkweed started planting it in their gardens. The aim was to create a "butterfly highway" right across the continent, to provide the insect with the plants that are absolutely essential to its survival. Finally this year, we are seeing the positive effects of all those ef...

Last week I wrote here about my observations of Monarch butterflies in my garden and the preference they have shown this year (since they've had a choice) for native milkweed over the tropical variety. After I had posted my conclusions, it later occurred to me that the reason I was able to make these observations was because I have actually had plenty of Monarchs in my garden this spring and summer. That was not the case over the past couple of years when my garden was almost Monarch-free. And that led me to a question: Are Monarchs making a comeback? Well, they've certainly made a comeback in my yard, but that's just anecdotal evidence.  Male Monarch on tithonia. Female Monarch on yellow cestrum. Monarch feeding from tropical milkweed. They do like the cestrum. And they do like the blossoms of the tropical milkweed. I wonder if my observations are supported by other gardeners across the country. It will be particularly interesting to see what the data show after this seas...

Over the past year, there has been a good bit of publicity and discussion in gardening circles about the efficacy of planting tropical milkweed ( Asclepias curassavica ) in our butterfly gardens as an aid to Monarch and other milkweed butterflies. There has been research that has indicated that this non-native plant might actually be harming these butterflies and urging gardeners to plant native milkweed instead.  For the past several years, the only milkweed that I had found available in local nurseries was the tropical kind, and so I had planted it in my garden where it has thrived. It lives through the winter here, although it generally dies back to the roots, and I usually cut it back several times during the year. Cutting it back supposedly reduces the toxins which may cause problems for butterflies, and, if it isn't cut back, it gets quite spindly and gangly and not very attractive. But the butterflies seemed to like it. Maybe because there wasn't an alternative for them...

Monarch butterfly on milkweed photographed in my backyard last summer. Monarch butterflies are one of those charismatic animals, like pandas or Bald Eagles , that it seems everyone wants to save. All this good will makes one wonder how they came to be in such trouble in the first place. And make no mistake, the Monarch is in big trouble. In the late 1990s, the butterfly's population was about one billion individuals. In the past few years that has fallen by 90 percent. That is a catastrophic decline any way you look at it. Humans have finally begun to take notice of that decline and to actually admit that they might have a little bit to do with it. For a species that finds it hard to acknowledge that global climate change is happening, even in the face of overwhelming scientific data, that admission is a big step. Having admitted culpability, many are seeking ways to make amends and to reverse the butterfly's trend toward extinction. On Monday, a major effort in that regard was...

Many times in 2014 I've bemoaned the absence of Monarch butterflies from my garden. Their visits have been few and far between. Lately though, and somewhat surprisingly, there seems to have been an uptick in their numbers. I often see them visiting the late blooms that still hang on in the garden here in late December. And just this week, I was surprised to see a mating pair in united flight across my backyard. I followed their flight and watched them land high in a limb of my next door neighbor's pine tree. You can just see them tucked in among the pine needles here. They remained there for at least an hour. But elsewhere in the garden there was evidence of other Monarch pairings. Checking out some of the milkweed that is still in bloom, there was evidence that it had been munched, but I didn't see the caterpillars that had done it. Then I looked at the fence/screen behind the bed where the milkweed lives and there they were - three fat caterpillars! Not only were they tak...

I have noted here at various times throughout this year that Monarch butterflies have been very scarce in my garden for this entire period. Unlike previous years when they were often plentiful, they've been a rare sight indeed in 2014. I was particularly delighted, then, earlier this week to find THREE of the beauties visiting my backyard at the same time. Their presence might have something to do with this plant, Eupatorim wrightii , the white mistflower. It is a favorite with butterflies of all kinds and it is in full bloom right now. The Monarchs seemed to particularly like it. These two were in shadow so it's a bit hard to see them, but they were hanging onto those white fuzzy blossoms. A nearby marigold also came in for its share of visits. Three is absolutely the high water mark for number of Monarchs in the garden at one time for this year, so this was definitely a banner day. As the migration continues, I'll be interested to see if that number can be topped, but, in...

For the last few weeks, my garden has been home to several Monarch butterfly caterpillars . This is cause for celebration because Monarch butterflies have been so scarce in the garden this year, but, finally, as the migrants have made their way south, several of them have stopped over in my yard to deposit their eggs on my milkweed plants. The eggs that successfully hatched have resulted in hungry caterpillars which have now stripped most of the leaves from those plants. I've been on the lookout for the next stage in butterfly development, but I had not seen any evidence of it until yesterday. I found this lovely green Monarch chrysalis hanging from the back of one of my patio chairs. Now, butterfly development proceeds in a fairly mundane fashion up until the chrysalis point. The female lays the egg on the host plant - the milkweed in the case of the Monarch. A tiny caterpillar hatches after a few days and begins to devour the plant. All caterpillars are born hungry and, as they c...

I've often written here and elsewhere about the plight of the Monarch butterflies and of the bees. They are iconic insects that can be recognized by most people, even those that are fairly ignorant about other insects, and they are hugely important cogs in the ecosystem. The migration of the Monarch is a tale which borders on the magical. A fragile insect which makes the long trek all across the continent from Canada to Mexico is something which catches people's imagination as a thing that is really quite marvelous. The Monarch's migration is particularly important and is cause for celebration in Mexico where the butterflies have traditionally wintered. A story in The New York Times this week ( "The Year the Monarch Didn't Appear" ) emphasized that important cultural link. On the first of November, when Mexicans celebrate a holiday called the Day of the Dead, some also celebrate the millions of monarch butterflies that, without fail, fly to the mountainous fi...

Lately, the  news for the Monarch butterfly  has been all bad. It seems that every week we have a new story detailing the depressing news of the beautiful butterfly's decline. Illegal logging, rampant ecotourism, and unusually harsh winters have damaged the butterfly's winter sanctuary in Mexico. Mid-America's big factory farms' reliance on the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides have killed butterflies and their caterpillars and have destroyed the stands of milkweed which caterpillars need to feed on in order to grow and transform into butterflies. And looming over all of this are the effects of global climate change which is reeking havoc with weather patterns, causing extended droughts and, paradoxically, historic floods, and contributing to raging wildfires which damage the butterfly's food source and kill butterflies. It is estimated that today's population of the butterflies is approximately one-fifteenth of what it was in 1997. This marks the third ...

The migration of animals is one of the true wonders of Nature, and none of those migrations is more wondrous, bordering on the miraculous, than that of the Monarch butterfly. Each late summer and fall the colorful orange, black, and white butterflies from all across the North American continent head south toward their winter home in Mexico . For such a fragile creature to make such of journey seems incredible, but it happens to be true. And when winter is over the butterflies head north again. An individual butterfly may not necessarily make the entire journey. The female butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants along the way and succeeding generations of the species then continue the trip until they reach their final destination. Some of them go all the way to Canada. There has long been speculation about what percentage of the butterflies actually fly the entire distance and what percentage are born along the way. Now there has been some research done which has given answers t...