It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's.....

Papilio cresphontes - commonly known as the giant swallowtail; the largest butterfly species in North America!  

This really made our day as this was a first for us.  And first experiences are, as a general rule, the best of the best.  The Missus captured this video:

The wingspan on this butterfly is a whopping 4–6 inches and features dark brown to black wings with striking yellow bands forming an "X" across the wings. The underside is mostly yellow with blue and red spots near the tail.  The hindwings feature thin tails lending the species the swallowtail name.

You'll find this critter throughout the eastern and southern United States, Mexico, Central America, and into South America.  In the US it’s most common year-round in the Southeast, but its range extends into the Midwest and as far north as southern Canada during warmer years.

Larva caterpillars are called orange dogs and feed on orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit  leaves.  They have a unique defense in that they resemble bird droppings and emit a foul odor to deter predators.  

Adults have a strong gliding flight and favor flowers featuring nectar.  Around here they're generally welcome as pollinators; although if you're a citrus grower in Florida or Texas you may feel differently.

Butterfly

Compared to the abundance of pollinators we were witness-to during COVID butterflies seem to have fallen in numbers of late.  At least that is my anecdotal observation.  Especially Monarchs.

Anyway, while having coffee on the porch a Red Admiral paid a call.

  

Muddle Or Puddle?

While fishing in Canada recently my pal Braumeister and I observed a vast number of Tiger Swallowtail butterflies taking flight just about everywhere.

It was stunning as I had never observed them in large numbers in Wisconsin.

Then there was this...

On the shoreline of the lake were were fishing was a gathering of swallowtails that were feasting-upon the salts and minerals in the sandy cobbled beach.

This behavior is called a puddle and north woods beaches are known to draw large numbers of butterflies that gather to absorbed needed salts.

Just about every species of butterfly engages in the habit of puddling.  I've observed small numbers alight-upon the damp soil of my garden to partake.  And when we had Labrador retrievers the monarch butterflies were fond of dining on fresh dog turds.

This was quite an amazing congregation to observe.

If you find yourself on an inland lake or Great Lakes shoreline be sure to cast an observant eye for more of the the same.

Handheld Device Photography

 

I was cleaning-out photos from my phone yesterday and came across a couple worthy of sharing.

The aster and butterfly GIF (animated image) were taken while walking the dog on October 5th. 

In the two-week interval that has passed since then both the asters and butterflies have gone away.  

Poof!

Gone.

 

 

 

The moon rise photo was taken a couple of days ago - Wednesday the 20th.

The composition is interesting - to me at least.

The moon is rising in the east as the sun is beginning to set in the west.

The result is a blue sky and back-lit pines framing our planetary satellite while the low light from the sunset is highlighting the fall colors in the background.  

The full October moon is called a Hunter's Moon.

A Very Hungry Caterpillar

Monarch butterflies literally blow-in here every Memorial Day.  However, our casual observation as that they were far fewer in number.

Did they get blown off-course?

Were their numbers in their wintering roost reduced by weather or something else?

Several months later as the next generations have hatched, pupated and continued to reproduce we're seeing many more flying about.

Including this hungry caterpillar chowing-down on milkweed......

Fall Flower

Meet Aster novae-angliae - commonly known as the New England Aster.      

This native plant grows all-over around here in sun, shade and moist spots.  A late bloomer it really shows-off when autumn rolls-around.  We included it in our prairie seed mix decades-ago.

The coloring can range from white to blue although ours generally are pink to purple with variations of  blue in between.  

It's a terrific nectar plan and I've been busy photographing many of the bees and butterflies paying it a visit.  

Cabbage butterfly upper with a couple of alfalfa butterflies below. 

 


The monarch butterfly likes it in particular and they are tanking-up on nectar as they prepare to depart on their migration south.

Dispatch From The Butterfly Ranch

caterpillar is in center - click on image for a closer look

From our walk today were many things of nature. Significant was this.         

The monarch butterflies that blew in on the winds out of the southwest over Memorial Day weekend completed their courtship ritual. Later, eggs were laid on the emergent milkweed. This year’s first class of recruits has hatched and larvae are all over the joint.         

And a battle-scarred eastern tiger swallowtail sat still long enough for a photo. They’ve been back for several weeks too.          

The Butterfly Ranch is back in business.       

Screw the coronavirus.....

Dispatch From the Butterfly Ranch

Today at 11:30 AM this adult butterfly emerged.

The last generation of the season has been emerging over the last week or so.

Monarchs that emerge as adults after about the third week of August will migrate and not reproduce.

Bon Voyage!

Dispatch From the Butterfly Ranch

Egg, larva, pupa, adult - the four basic life stages in an insect’s life cycle.  I’ve been visiting each of these stages this season on the Butterfly Ranch mostly as it relates to monarch butterflies.  Things are winding-down here at the ranch so there is a high probability this will be the last installment for 2019.  We'll see. 

It takes monarchs about a month to go through the stages from egg to adult and once it has attained adulthood the butterfly will live another two to six weeks and may actually participate in the migration south. 

Two weeks ago I had the unique opportunity to observe a monarch caterpillar pupate. 
I published and account of it here.  This is the fourth and final installment on the story – an adult emerges. 

The primary job of the adult stage is to reproduce the species.  When monarchs mate they remain together for as long as 16 hours with the females laying eggs almost immediately.   

click on the images for a closer look

Last Friday, August 30th, I checked on the pupa that was hanging from the siding adjacent to the front door.  It had previously begun darkening earlier in the week indicating that the emergence of an adult was nigh.  In the photo above you can see the wings of the butterfly encased in the pupa.  And then BOOM - this happened.  The adult emerged and was almost finished drying its wings when we found it.  

This butterfly is the final generation of monarchs - the adults that emerge in late summer and early fall.  As a consequence it has the job of migrating to overwintering grounds in Mexico.  There the adults spend the winter roosting in trees until conditions are favorable for their return to their breeding grounds.  These adults can live up to nine months.  Here is the monarch that emerged almost ready to take flight. 

The monarch that emerged in this picture happens to be a boy.  Field marks to look for to distinguish one sex from the other are on the wings.  The veins of a male’s wings are thinner and more delicate than those of the female.  Furthermore, males have a black spot on a vein on each hind wing that is not present on the female.  These spots are made of specialized scales which produce a pheromone used during courtship in many species of butterflies and moths. Remember to look for the 'balls' on the boy monarch. 

Bon Voyage little fella!

Dispatch From The Butterfly Ranch

From are walk this morning was an explosion of pollinators.  Couldn't get any monarchs to hold still for a photo and was totally unsuccessful in capturing video of a hummingbird  moth.  I did manage these photos...

Viceroy

Click on images for a closer look



Great Spangled Fritillary

Fall is most definitely in the air but the butterfly and moth action hasn't abated.  Not yet anyway.

Dispatch From the Butterfly Ranch

Jill and I are in agreement that the 2019 butterfly recruitment was among the best of years in our memories.  Which would make for a lot of collective memory.

The dominant species was the monarch - and likely attributable to the abundance of milkweed host plant growing around here.  I suppose if more individual landowners and homeowners made an effort to favor pollinator habitat in lieu of sterile and manicured landscape we could provide these winged critters and all of their insect cousins a better start to life and survivability in general in an increasingly chemical dominated world.

At the time of this posting we still have monarch caterpillars that have yet to pupate.  We have chrysalis attached to the house, the porch furniture, garden plants, the shed and just about anywhere else you might care to look.  There are adult butterflies yet to emerge although the current generation flying-about should begin staging for the annual migration before too long.

Just like the orioles, tree swallows and redwing blackbirds have all left us for their southern homes - the monarchs will follow.  The eastern tiger swallowtail pupa overwinter as well as the first and second instar larvae of the viceroy.

As we prepare to say goodbye here are some photos to remember them by...

click on images for a closer look

Viceroy

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (black phase)

Monarch

Dispatch From the Butterfly Ranch

It isn't very often that you have an opportunity to witness something like this but this was a layup in my view.  The Law of Large Numbers and Averages so to speak.

We've witnessed large numbers of monarch butterflies this year - probably the best year in recent memory.  And as a consequence there are monarch caterpillars all over the place.  Seriously, we have had to be mindful of where we step on the porch, the walkways and the driveway.  Chrysalis are hanging from everything from a couple of cinderblocks at the entrance of the garage, bird spikes, porch furniture even the siding of the house.  That's right the siding.

Like this critter that decided to crawl along the underside edge of the siding adjacent to the front door.



 He stayed like this for most of a day and overnight followed by affixing himself to the edge of the siding and assuming this classic pose. 

Twenty-four hours passed and the caterpillar commenced to twitching and flinching.  I grabbed my phone and waited for the moment to arrive and recorded the transformation from larva to pupa.

Pretty cool inasmuch as the process occurs relatively quickly.

All the basic components for an adult butterfly are contained within that small green package. 

With some patience and a wee bit of luck we might be around to witness the monarch butterfly emerge.

Update From the Butterfly Ranch

Some caterpillar had the brilliant idea to crawl into the machine shed when we weren’t looking and hang out.
As a consequence I found this young lady stretching her wings on the concrete floor when was putting the 4-Wheeler and some tools away.   

 
She’ll do better in the sunny and overgrown kitchen garden. 

Largest number of monarchs we’ve observed in years.

Fall Flowers

The New England Asters are blooming and are showing-off in all of their autumn glory.  The Stiff Goldenrod is warming-up and is soon to be in the on-deck circle.  Things are still happening here at the Butterfly Ranch.

click on images for a closer look

 

Photo above - Cabbage Butterfly upper with a couple of Alfalfa Butterflies below.

Monarch bellying-up to the nectar bar as it prepares to depart for a south of the border vacation.

The Monarch Conundrum

In the Big City there has been the annual staging of the monarch butterfly migration.  The butterflies are on the move for parts south. It is pretty cool and since the city apartment Jill and I keep is immediately adjacent to a roost site a couple of times a year we get to observe the migration action up-close and personal.  If you haven't witnessed it before - it is quite cool. 

There is a very active monarch restoration network working hard in an urban environment to restore habitat and support the migration.  Photos, video and more information about the Friends of the Monarch Trail here. 

Anyone reading this blog also knows that, Jill and I maintain a reasonably large pollinator habitat here at The Platz.  It has been a terrific year for butterflies of all types including the monarchs.  Yet to my eyes there hasn’t been much sign of departures on a migration.   As a matter of fact the comings and goings of the monarch butterflies seemed pretty normal with numbers what we have become accustomed-to over the past few months. 

click on images for a closer look

 

The photos in this post were taken last Sunday and Monday and include at least three stages of monarch development.   

Since none of these insects seemed to be in a rush to beat it out of Dodge I was puzzled by this conundrum.  Was it a consequence of northern latitude? A milder clime on the peninsula?  What gives?  

Talking to some of the people in the Big City I was lead to believe that the monarchs were on their city roosts, departing for parts south and there wasn’t an explanation for anything I observed at latitude halfway between the equator and the pole. 

Pre-emergent - you can see the butterfly within
 
Thursday morning I was chatting with a guy setting-up a tripod and camera to photograph the city monarchs and he didn’t believe a word I was sharing with him.  All the monarchs were in Wauwatosa – wasn’t it obvious to me?  As far as he was concerned I might as well have lived at the North Pole.  I was either nuts or making stuff-up.   

Rescued from the composter and it pupated before my very eyes

 

So were the monarchs observed here on the peninsula too late to the migration dance? What was the backstory?   Curious, I fired-off an email on the subject to the Department of Etymology at UW Madison.  I received a reply yesterday afternoon and learned that the migration is both complicated and nowhere near over.   From the experts was this: 

Hi Tom,    

Thanks for your inquiry about monarch life history. This is a complicated time to sort out generations, life stages, and behaviors because so many things are overlapping. Monarchs that emerge as adults after about the third week in August will migrate, and not reproduce.

However, there are still reproductive monarchs around that emerged earlier, some from the local area and some from farther north. My guess is that you're seeing the immature stages (eggs, larvae and pupae) that are the offspring of the last reproductive monarchs of the season, and that the adults in your garden are a combination of migrants and these late reproducers.   

This weird overlap goes on for about a month; you should stop seeing the immature monarchs in a week or so, but will keep seeing migrants for a month or so (especially since it sounds like you have great habitat for them).  Thanks for all that you're doing to support monarchs and the other species that use their habitat. 

Just emerged and drying-out

 

So, there you have it.  There is overlap and it is complicated.  Raising a toast to science and a few more weeks of monarchs to be enjoyed...