Been busy of late. It's migrating monarch butterfly season.
Under the tutelage of naturalist, monarch maven and friend Clare Dattilo and her three children, I have taken up the cause. I have been hand-raising monarch butterfly caterpillars and watching over mine and other's chrysalises. When the adult butterflies emerge. I tag them with a number and let them fly away. This time of the year, they migrate to Mexico. Oh yes!
In my third book, Ephemeral by Nature, I tell their complete story and how, beginning in the 1930s, a husband and wife team, Frederick & Norah Urquhart dedicated 40-years of their lives, piecing together their migration story.
Why do you hand-raise monarchs? Their population is in decline and they need help and to protect them from the hazards of being a caterpillar that include parasitoids insects—12 species of tachinid flies and at least one braconid wasp—that seek them out to lay eggs inside them that results in the death of the late-instar larvae or pupae. And it is not a pretty way to die.
And it is all so fascinating to watch the entire process of metamorphosis.
Thank you, Clare!
For more photos go to: ephemeral monarchs.
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| Adult monarch tagged with the number ZEE530 about to fly for the first time over the meadows at Cherokee Farm and begin her trip to Mexico. |
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