A seasonal butterfly house

The Western North Carolina Nature Center has a lovely small seasonal butterfly house that I hadn't visited before. Displaying native butterflies (monarchs, gulf fritillaries, painted ladies, buckeyes, sulfurs, giant swallowtails, and others), it's a simple, but very effective display.

A hoop house, covered with black mesh, entering and exiting through double-screen doors is the basic set-up: inexpensive and nice. Raised beds support a variety of nectar plants and many other donated plants creating a nice border mix.

This monarch butterfly benefited from a purple coneflower inflorescence.

An outdoor butterfly garden bed completes the display. Great fun, indeed.

We'll be breaking ground in a couple of weeks for a new Butterfly Garden installation at the Botanical Garden where I work. We're excited about adding lots of host plants for butterfly caterpillars in addition to the nectar plants!

Monarch migration

My butterfly friends gave a great presentation about their trip to the overwintering sites in Mexico today. The monarch reserves in Michoacan aren't easy to reach; they're east of Mexico City, outside the city of Morelia, but far off the normal tourist track. They went with a Monarch group from Georgia led by two experienced guides, with a group size of 11. Perfect!

Monarch on Zinnia in summer

To get to the reserves (the overwintering site for all of our Eastern monarchs) requires truck rides, hiking, and horseback. But my friends are definitely butterfly enthusiasts, and that wasn't going to be an obstacle for them.

Years ago, I visited the Pacific Grove reserve (the overwintering site of the Western U.S. monarchs); they were roosting all over the trees there, but were inactive at that time.

My friends were able to see the monarchs in Michoacan, stimulated by warmer weather at the end of February, flying around, and getting ready for migration north. How wonderful!

To follow migration of monarchs north and south, Monarch Watch and Journey North are both great organizations, with informative websites reflecting real time data. It gives folks like my butterfly friends and me the chance to tag monarchs and/or post our observations; we're contributing to a better understanding of migration patterns and variability as well as serving as citizen scientists.

Monarchs heading south

Journey North reports that the first monarchs have just arrived in their wintering areas in northern Mexico as the migration here continues. I just saw four nectaring on the butterfly bush, and have been seeing them for weeks now. My butterflying friends tagged 50 recently as part of their Monarch Watch volunteer work. It will be interesting to hear how many of their tagged monarchs are recovered.

I even saw a hummingbird yesterday at the Garden, visiting a red salvia. The previous day, there were two in the same general area. Yesterday's date is the latest that I've ever seen the last fall hummingbird before -- but there are still plenty of flowers available! Hilton Pond's ruby-throated hummingbird site reports their last fall sighting on 18 October (1986).

A fall morning

Brilliant blue skies, low humidity, and a temperature less than 50° F make a perfect fall morning. The last hummingbirds are coming through, taking a break at our feeders and the coral honeysuckle flowers.

Monarchs are traveling south too, visiting whatever nectar-rich flowers they can find as they head towards Mexico. The butterfly standbys of Buddleia and Lantana are dotted with orange in midday. I saw this monarch last year about this time.

A pair of bluebirds flew to one of the big oaks as I walked up the hill to the office this morning, along with the usual mockingbirds, blue jays, and brown thrashers.

And the leaves of red maples and sourwoods are turning red.

Time to head south?

The ruby-throated hummingbirds are whizzing around our 3 feeders -- there are at least 4-5; it's hard to tell. It's a reminder that fall is coming, even though there's plenty of warm weather ahead, the days are visibly shortening. A fellow garden blogger in northern B.C. reports a first frost warning (yikes!); another garden blogger friend in England is putting one of his pea patches to bed, and sowing mustards as a cover crop.

And I'm seeing monarchs coming through as they make their way south to Mexico, and their overwintering grounds in Michoacan.

Hooray, a spring monarch caterpillar!

My butterfly gardening friends sent me an e-mail this afternoon that they had found several monarch caterpillars on their milkweed plants.

We've had relatively few spring monarch adults the last few years -- none a couple of years ago, and just a small number last year. This spring, though, I've seen maybe 7 to 10 monarchs, all individuals seemingly passing through. And the first one I saw was really in the forefront of the migration (when I posted a sighting on Journey North, it was the farthest north in the SE (US) on that date!)

And none of us (my butterfly enthusiast friends and I) have had spring caterpillars before.

But at least one female visited my milkweed, too, this year.

When I got home this evening, I went out to check my plants. I'd been weeding in the front meadow last weekend, and took the photos posted yesterday early in the week, and hadn't noticed anything but robust plants.

But this evening, first I saw signs of leaf chewing, then caterpillar frass,

and then spotted what looks like a 4th instar caterpillar.

Hooray! Maybe I'll have a few monarchs fed by my plants flying about in the garden in early summer.

Ready for caterpillars

Monarchs favor milkweeds, but definitely have favorites within milkweed species.

Showy butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa, a relatively common milkweed in the Southeastern U.S., is a great nectar plant for many insects, but isn't really a favorite here for female monarchs to lay eggs (and therefore support caterpillars).

The story of monarchs, their very specific host plants, and how the alkaloids that they ingest help them deter predation is fascinating, and their migration incredible.

But Asclepia syriaca, Common Milkweed, is definitely preferred in our Southeastern gardens. I've put in lots of transplants, thanks to my friends who are butterfly enthusiasts like me, and now my plants are waiting for females to lay eggs.

Here's a photo of monarch caterpillars on common milkweed a couple of years ago in a perennial border at the Garden.