It is so exciting to find eggs and cats on our host plants! And to see our pollenators at work and learn their ways is a joy. Did you know that each 'cat' has a characteristic way of munching a leaf?
Here are some tips for finding Monarch eggs and raising them
https://monarchbutterflygarden.net/hunt-gather-protect-monarch-eggs/
We came from here
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1400570/
Muddy wrote
"Monarch eggs are smaller than those aphids?! Wow, maybe I've been missing them; I thought they were bigger. I did look with my reading glasses on today, and even examined some bird poop carefully because I know some eggs or cats look like it : - )"
Yes Muddy, the Monarch eggs are smaller than a pin head. Look at pic #2 above to compare with swamp milkweed bud.
I just got back from Vermont. No egg activity before I left but today as I was squishing orange oleander aphids on some of my milkweed I found 48 eggs! Much like last year at this time, most of the eggs were down low (6-12 inches). Check your A perrenis as I found two on the seedlings you gave me.
I use my reading glasses and a magnifying glass! What really helps me see the eggs however is if I can bend over a stem and turn it in the sun so I can see the egg profile, side view like a little raised dot which is hard to my finger tip touch. Best is to watch a mama Monarch and then go to the plant she was on!
Sally and Muddy and Catmint....if you take the leaf with the egg off the plant, I found last year that I could go back to that plant the next day and find another newly laid egg! If you find two eggs on a leaf it's likely that you have two mamas!
Pic is how I keep my Monarch eggs in Dollar Store cake covers. The tip top of egg turns brown (head of baby cat showing) just before hatching.
Catmint, I really liked your pics of how you raise your baby cats! Where are you finding most of your eggs this year? What Milkweeds are you growing? Will you have enough good leaves to feed them all?
Sally, I currently have rearing containers to share! Lol Will try to post some pics of my set up soon.
Seq, Wayne had the same experience with 'Monarchs following him on Friday! Guess that's why I've found 48 eggs! They are not bothered much by human activity nearby and will continue to do their thing unlike Swallowtails who will fly off. Also, it seems to me that Monarchs fly lower. Maybe its all that bad tasting to birds Milkweed they consume that makes them more casual about the garden?
Speaking of predation on Monarch cats and eggs, I encountered a litle grey tree frog sitting on the top of one of my swap milkweed plants as I was squishing aphids and gathering eggs! Hmmm
Before I go to sleep some numbers.
Yes, 1-2% survival of Monarch eggs au natural. I figure we are seeing and raising the fourth generation, the one before the Migration. If we raise the eggs we have (Sally 4+, Catmint 10+,me and Muddy and Greenthumb and Seq) we could send off 10,000+ in mid October!!!!
(1/2 female and each female lays average of 300 eggs...30 - 40 mamas x 300 eggs each = 10K+)
Wouldn't that be a sight to see! And how neat if we 'tagged' them so we could find out where they go! (Down the coast. along the appelachians, stay in Fla, Texas to Mexico?)
Sweet dreams you all
hi, Coleup! Saw another Monarch yesterday and found 3 more eggs, so now I have 16 plus my little cat.
48 eggs! Wow!!
So far, I have found eggs only on my tropical milkweed. I check the plants most days, but the little eggs get eaten so quickly by predators, that I pretty much have to be in the yard at the same time as the Monarch, following along behind her and collecting them right after she lays them. In fact, usually I find predators already climbing/buzzing towards them!
coleup I love the cake covers! dollar stores to the rescue.
I haven't found any eggs on tropical. Neither have I actually seen the one or two who laid the eggs I did find (cats of)
I think they might be attracted to my tropical because it's the largest stand of milkweed I have--multiple plants, as a result of the reseeding from last year.
I definitely hope I have enough tropical to feed the little guys when they hatch and start growing! It's hard because with one egg laid on a large leaf near its base, I have to sacrifice pretty much the whole leaf to bring the egg in. I wonder, if I put other types of leaves among the eggs, if they will eat it when they hatch? Well, tropical is what I have most of, so probably best to stick with that...
Sally, I feel fortunate to have caught this mama Monarch this weekend--it just happened to be a weekend and I was home. She (and maybe her buddies?) have probably visited on other days, too, but I wasn't home to see... :-(
Well, oddly, three of the cats I found were on a spindly branch of common, in a patch where there were only several stems to begin with, that lost half their leaves to Tussock moth cats.
I have a big stand of tropical in full sun but this is the first year. Also a big stand of common thats been here many years, other side of the yard from the little one.
Well, hard to know why they choose one plant and not another. :-/
judy--
back to the last post in the previous thread.....re checking mt swamp MW
for eggs... Not likely that there will be any..
--I have not seen even one cat on my parsley or dill this year. Two years now.
--I have not seen any Monarch butterflies in my yard yet...only the BST, makes sense,,,
I will go and look--not that I know what to look for...YES! I have seen all your pictures....etc...
I guess I am just "out of the loop" here...
g.
GIta, don't feel bad. I have HUGE amounts of MW and only found five cats so far.
That's too bad you haven't seen any yet Gita.
I felt like I was being stalked by Monarchs all weekend. It was pretty great.
coleup---
I have found ONE egg on the tip of a newer shoot (from the base) of my
Swamp MW. Please advise--I read the link above--but I really do not
want to "get into it"--if you know what I mean. BUT--I will do what I can to
pass these things over to you.
THEN---I went to clean off all the leaves of my tropical MW--
they were so covered with the aphids!. I was using a small piece of paper towel
dipped into some soapy water. Wipe...wipe....and then I saw something bigger
on the towel that might be an instar. They looked a bit too fat to be an instar (I've seen one)
but I put it back on the underside of a leaf. Later I found another one just like it
at the base of a bunch of leaves by the stem.
Took a couple pictures--but--you know that my camera does not focus at macro
any closer than 4". So--the pictures are not so great.
Please tell me what to do??? I read the link you posted at the top of thiss thread.
I will be seeing sally friday morning and can relay these to her--and, coleup,
you can come and get them.
I will do another close-looking of these new leaves just in case I missed something,
I am sure I am correct on the egg. I touched it--and it felt hard. No picture if it...
Here are the two shots i took of the --whatever they are--small thingies.
They do not look like instars--do they?
G.
Gita, those are not Monarch caterpillar instars. I do not know what they are.
As to the Monarch egg you found today: Hurray! Even though you dodn't see it, at least one Monarch has found your yard and Milkweed! Now til mid Sept is the height of the breeding season around here, so there may be many more visits! They will nectar on your flowers and possibly lay more eggs on your milkweeds.
The egg you found on your swamp milkweed today will most likely hatch by Friday. If you want to meet up at Sallyg's on Friday I would be happy to raise the little one. It is much easier to find an egg than a newly hatched cat so if you want, please 'collect' it on its leaf and keep as in the article you just read. Include a leaf or two as perfect and tender and pure as possible!
No problem if you just want to leave it on its birth plant, I'd still like to meet up with you and Sally if that's OK with Sally. Time?
hi, Gita. I think Coleup may be away visiting her daughter.
I'm not sure what the little things on your plant are, but they don't look like Monarch cats to me! Monarch cats look like tiny versions of the full-grown cat pretty much from the time they hatch. The stripes just become more discernible as they get bigger.
Here's a Monarch cat at different stages of development--you can see the little stripes from shortly after he hatched.
oops--sorry, Coleup and I cross-posted!! :-)
The second egg I found just hatched this morning--he is the tiniest little thread of a cat and he's eaten a tiny little hole in the milkweed. So cute!!
Now only 14 more eggs to go--and these should all hatch around the same time!! :-o
Thanks for the info, coleup; it never occurred to me to look at the base of the plants!
CatMint, could you just cut out the section of the leaf the egg is on?
That's a cute little thing, CatMint!
I didn't enlarge your photo, Gita, but it struck me that it could be a scale insect.
BAMONA just confirmed the two skippers we were wondering about in the earlier thread:
They are both Zabulon skippers. The one on the left is female, and the one on the right is male. Greenthumb was right about the male Zabulon! :-)
This message was edited Aug 17, 2015 9:50 PM
Just got another ID/sighting confirmation from BAMONA. What I thought was a cabbage white turns out to be a white-form clouded sulphur! So I guess it's not just cabbage whites swirling in large numbers around my garden--they are mixed with white-form clouded sulphurs! :-)
BAMONA note: "This is a white-form Colias female, most likely C. philodice because of relatively pale white color and HW ventral spot not ringed with orange."
Thanks for the confirmation, CatMint. This says that lovegrass (Eragrostis) is one of the host plants for Zabulon skipper caterpillars; I have some so perhaps that has helped attract them to my yard. http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/poanes-zabulon
(It's going to seed now; I'll collect seed in case people are interested!)
I've been seeing lots of white-colored butterflies, but they are so shy that I haven't been able to get a close look. Perhaps I'll need to get a photo using something other than my iPhone...
thanks, Muddy--it's a pretty grass--would love some seed if you have some to spare. :-)
I can totally relate to the difficulties of capturing good photos--not only do they not stay put and pose the way I wish they would :-D, but I also use my cell phone camera, which has limited capabilities!
I'll be happy to collect some.
I hope it is an egg---(it seems so tiny! but it seems "hard" when I touch it.
If I put the leaf with the egg on it in a plastic container with some more succulent leaves,--
I do not need to worry, at this stage, that there may be a cat escaping through a small crack or something?
Will keep checking the leaves....
BTW--besides the oodles of orange Aphids--there were also a good amount, of what
looked like, tiny round, dark, spider-like insects on the bottoms of the leaves.
I could see their tiny legs,,,I wiped them all off with the soapy water...
Would these be some kind of spider mites (but bigger ones) feasting on the Aphids?
New plants....New worries.... G.
thanks, Muddy! :-)
Gita, I have never touched one of my Monarch eggs--I would be afraid of damaging it in some way--so I'm not sure what they feel like. Coleup or Greenthumb may have some insight into that.
With my Monarch eggs, I put the leaf with the egg in a plastic container. I would put a lid on the container, then check it every day to see how the egg is doing. If suddenly the egg disappears, then you know you have a baby caterpillar--the baby cat will eat the remainder of the egg once it hatches. That's a good time to put a fresh leaf in, after you've identified where the baby cat is. I would not put more than one leaf in for a single egg, as when they first hatch they eat only a tiny amount at a time.
Cat--
I have NO Intention on becoming a Monarch MAMA. I just want to pass on
to someone if I find an egg. I am NOT going to start raising the eggs and cats.
Too many other things to do around here... G.
I understand Gita! Just trying to answer your question about containers and leaves.
Gita, most tupperware type containers lids fit tight enough that baby cats won't escape.
Well--
The "egg" is gone! If it was an egg....
It was a good "dry run" should I ever find another one.
Sorry! Gita
So funny!
I have been scouring the Swamp Milkweed almost every day. Could not find eggs, didn't think any leaves were getting eaten.
Guess what this morning.
One..
2
3
4
5
6 big fat caterpillars pooping all over the place! The frass was the sign that clued me in. I bet they're almost ready to pupate.
How exciting! Do you know what kind they are?
well, uh, they are on Milkweed and look suspiciously like Monarchs.... though they could have been Tussock moth, sorry it didn't occur to me to specify.
Muddy, the other milkweed butterfly in our area is the Queen but it is a rare visitor. So, I think Sally's cats are Monarchs. An easy way to tell the difference is that Queen cats have three sets of 'antenna' (head, middle, tail) and Monarchs have only two (head and tail)
http://texasbutterflyranch.com/2012/12/07/queen-monarch-caterpillars-and-butterflies-how-to-tell-the-difference/
You have all been so successful with getting monarchs to visit your milkweed! I don't think any of my milkweed came back this year. Or rather, they've been gobbled up by aggressive neighboring plants. I'm going to head on over the plant swap thread and ask for some more milkweed. :)
Sally, do you want to borrow one of those nifty mesh pop up butterfly keepers that I got from Greenthumb (Loudoun County Wildlife)? It will keep your fat cats safe from wasps and tachnid flies thru chrysallis and eclosure. Just before pupating they will take a huge dump. Yep, piles of frass is another clue to their presence!
Yea SSG, music to my ears! And, I just happen to have some plants looking for a nectar plant rich home. Did you know that there was a Butterfly Garden Club in Silver Spring?
What, there is?? I don't think I could handle another garden club LOL!
When would be good to get it from you? Not busy tonight, but in the AM I have work and then baseball game. Sunday making coleslaw and taking it to someones place in Charles County to a picnic. Monday morning I am free till work.
I should have bought one when he offered. I can probably get one at Homestead in Severna Park? Or what else? I will have my five that have been inside also pupating soon. They are at least ten days old I think, or some are. Three are clinging to the upper side or their tub, tonight, though one seemed quite interested in the stick in there earlier.
Or I can run around the corner to Dollar store on Veterans for the Cake topper aka Cat Keeper.
I'm suddenly gripped with caterpillar momma angst.
I'm on my way Monarch mama!
