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While we were eating dinner tonight Danielle and I were excited to see a beautiful monarch visiting our milkweed plants. This was the first monarch we have seen in our yard yet this summer. Danielle was quickly disappointed, though, when I went out to take a picture and discovered this one was a boy. She was really hoping for monarch eggs.
After dinner Danielle and I sat outside to watch the hummingbirds and were excited to find that we were wrong. Obviously the male butterfly was not our first visitor because we found 2 little monarch caterpillars!! Upon closer inspection of the milkweed we found several holey leaves and an egg. The caterpillars can be tricky to find when they are little, so maybe we'll find more over the next few days. We don't usually find any eggs or caterpillars until the first week of August. They are a couple weeks early this year, which makes sense because just about everything else has been early this summer, too.
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| I've got my eye(s) on you! |
While we were sitting outside we saw other creepy crawlies on the milkweed plants. There were a couple of these little spiders climbing around the blossoms. I didn't have my tripod out, and I can't hold my hands still enough to get a sharp picture, but I thought this was creepy enough.
This guy was so crazy looking! He looks like he has stuffing coming out of his rear end! It's got to be the weirdest bug I've ever seen! Thankfully it was near a leafhopper bug so I was able to identify it relatively quickly. It is a leafhopper nymph, although I'm not sure what type of leafhopper it is. Compared to some types of leafhopper nymphs, this guy is pretty drab looking. Nature is so interesting. Danielle and I had the best time giggling over this crazy creature.
2 comments:
We haven't had any caterpillars lately b/c all my milkweed plants died. For a while they would grow back after being eaten, but I think they were maxed out. I don't remember scattering seeds, but we found a few sprouts that look milkweed-ish in another part of the garden though.
I planted swamp milkweed this year, which has pink blossoms. Ours have gone to seed now, so I would be happy to send you some seeds if you'd like. I prefer the tropical milkweed (orange blossoms) but the monarchs like this too and the hummingbirds seem to like it, too.
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