New thread for 202, y'all switch over!

Hi Lynda, thank you for the new thread.

Noticed another one to start, I have to go cook dinner, I will try to get to it tomorrow.

Postig a new pic to start the year.



A wooly bear I found in November.

Monarch back and flying around again. This past year I believe we had 25 monarch cats.

I definitely have to concentrate on planting more milkweed this year! I have spent a lot of time expanding my black swallowtail plants; this is the year for the Monarchs. We are (or used to be) in a major flight path for Monarchs, I used to see thousands every day in mid to late fall. Now, hardly any at all. I find it hard to believe that the population has been reduced that much, and I find conflicting numbers when I do research on population numbers. There is sound scientific evidence that many songbirds have changed their migratory flight patterns, maybe this is happening here with the Monarchs. I will need to do more digging on this issue to see if this is true. I will still plant more milkweeds.🦋

Monarchs always come to the Asclepia curassavica

Beautiful! I'm ready for summer! 😁

I forgot to add that it is a Danaus erippus, the southern monarch,
I don't know exactly what is the difference with the monarch you have in the Northern hemisphere. I only know it is not the same

for the new thread

Our "espejitos" (agraulis vanillae) in the garden

Very nice Ceci, I actually saw a Cloudless sulphur butterfly yesterday, we've had temps up in the mid 80's this past week, way above our normal.

Our temps have been warm, then cold, then warm again. If it stays warm for two or more weeks, I hope to see some butterflies or bees.

It's not warm here...and it rained, but didn't snow as predicted. It may later, though.

Today we have the monarch hanging around again. Also some sulpurs. How cold temps can a monarch handle? Even after it was 32 outside they came back the next day.

I have wondered that myself.We will have the sulphurs come out first here, very often on warm days in February.

Butterflies tend to stay here as long as daytime temps are warm enough to fly. Usually around 50 - 70F , depending on their size.
Smaller butterfles are usually the last to leave when the temps start dropping. On cooler nights they tend to shelter in things like bushes, trees and clumps or piles of grass and leaves.

Thanks, Kurt, for the info. Always wondered about that!

The monarchs won't arrive up here until just after May 15 (and even then you won't see them, but we can start finding eggs.) I'm always amazed when I see a butterfly here in February; whenever we have an unseasonably warm day and it gets into the 40's for a few hours you can sometimes see them flying about but no idea what they are looking for because nothing is blooming. I think they are Skippers.

I will be refrigerating some milkweed seeds soon to get them ready for planting indoors in March.

It is a small butterfly but you often can find it in the garden. Mariposa "Bataraza" (Ortilia ithra)