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Monarch Butterfly resting after emerging today

Started 3 months ago | Discussions thread
SimonPR New Member • Posts: 2
Re: Monarch Butterfly resting after emerging today

The monarch photo was taken in my garden in Los Altos, CA. The temperature was around 60 degrees when it was released. It is pretty late in the season for them to hatch. The egg was laid on the underside of a Milkweed plant leaf and when the caterpillar emerged, it fed on the leaves of the Milkweed until it was large enough to form a chrysalis, the pupae stage in its lifecycle. Milkweed is the only plant that they can eat and it is habitat loss of Milkweed, and insecticides, which seem to have dramatically reduced the population of Monarchs.

Given that they are endangered and it was late in the season, I collected the caterpillars and placed them indoors in mason jars with a twig or two. They attach to the twig and form the chrysalis. The indoor heat helps speed up the transition to butterfly relative to what they can do outside in the cold. Once they hatch as butterflies, they rest for a day and then I release them to continue their journey, which in the case of the CA Monarchs, is wintering in Monterrey.

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