monarch caterpillar

Tom

A utility company mowed a clearing in the woods by my house. The first plants to recover were the milkweed and dogbane. So I've been scoping out the field as monach caterpillar habitat and finally found one. The plants are still small so I had to lay on the ground to get this shot.



Here it is in feeding position, head down, after (I think) chewing partially through the petiole to reduce the flow of the sticky sap to the leaf.



Amazing to think that in three weeks it will be a butterfly, migrating about 2000 miles south to overwinter.

Lord Vetinari

Lovely captures - Butterflies soon.
Brian V.

Skippy

Tom wrote:

A utility company mowed a clearing in the woods by my house. The first plants to recover were the milkweed and dogbane. So I've been scoping out the field as monach caterpillar habitat and finally found one. The plants are still small so I had to lay on the ground to get this shot.

Here it is in feeding position, head down, after (I think) chewing partially through the petiole to reduce the flow of the sticky sap to the leaf.

Amazing to think that in three weeks it will be a butterfly, migrating about 2000 miles south to overwinter.

Very nice captures Tom,
They sure make short work of the milk weeds don't they

I love the casing they create to do their morphing in, how it appears to have little gold dots along the cap.

The other thing I like about these is that you can see through the transparency of the casing and watch it hatch.

Nice work Tom .... Skippy
.

Tom

Thanks for the kind words.

I marked the area where I found the caterpillar and will try to return daily to monitor its growth. I've never seen a monarch chrysalis "in the wild" before.

- Tom

GOLDENORFE

good shots, are you keeping it to shoot later stages?
phil
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/

Tom

GOLDENORFE wrote:

good shots, are you keeping it to shoot later stages?

I didn't want to disturb it too much so it is still in its natural habitat. My kids come with me on these nature hikes and I'm teaching them about "treading lightly" in the woods, so we left the caterpillar where we found it. We've had no trouble coming back and locating the caterpillar the last two days; it is quite large already and will probably pupate soon. If we can still find it in chrysalis stage then maybe we'll put it into a butterfly tent (and release it right after it emerges). I'll photograph as much of the development as I can.