Our Night With The Monarch Butterflies (Photo Essay)

Yesterday was the beginning of summer reading - an event that we look forward to as a family. This year's theme is "Catch The Reading Bug" which is great because Gideon LOVES bugs and because we just bought Gideon the Butterfly Treehouse he's been begging for (it was a triple points celebration gift to him)

So, the programs started up yesterday with the frog program in the afternoon (couldn't be there for that one, but we did get to see them for a bit before the butterfly program started - I have a few photos of them for later)

I am so glad that we decided to attend the Monarch program. We had read the kids were getting milkweed plants there. I figured to plant and to attract the monarchs, right? I was wrong!

So, we get there and he holds up a poster of the life cycle of the Monarch from egg to butterfly. He asked what the chrysalis was and Gideon yells chrysalis! I have to admit that the guy looked really shocked that little Gideon knew that answer. He does know his butterflies. :)

We discussed how the Monarchs out now will only live one month. They will spread eggs for the second generation who also live only one month. The third generation get lucky and they get to live 7-8 months and migrate in the colder months.

Then comes what we were waiting for... the milkweed plants! We were told when signing in that the kids are getting caterpillars and they will have to find them. Each kid went up and got a clipping of milkweed. On that plant was either monarch eggs or a baby caterpillar. We had both! (Though the egg either fell off or hatched we are not sure which) It's a three day span from egg laying to hatching, and the clippings were collected the day or two before the program, so we don't know.

This is our Monarch caterpillar. Cute fella, right? Well I'll tell you now, these shots are nowhere near life size. Our little one is less than an 8th of an inch (thank goodness for MACRO mode, lol)



The little points at the head and tail are hardly visable without the macro feature.


Here's the little one's face.


Here's the little one next to my finger to establish size. We estimate it's 1-4 days old.


The attached shots are clearer. Not sure why they are coming in pixeled here.

This is the egg we found on the plant too. Sorry it's not the best shot I couldn't capture it well it was really small.


We were told the stages of their lives. They will sit on this milkweed plant for 12-14 days and they will NOT leave it. They will continue to eat this entire time.

After the 12-14 days are up they will move away from the plant. This is instinctual as some birds will find find them there and try to eat them. Should they try to eat them the bird will wind up throwing up. There's some sort of poison that induces this.

For another 12-14 days they will continue to eat and grow. At this stage they will start to hang upside down in the shape of an J and start to spin their chrysalis. This takes only a minute to do since it's already growing under their skin. They shed the skin and now what you see is the chrysalis.

When they emerge it'll be 9-10am when the sun is warm. (Yes, it's always at this time, oddly enough which means we will probably miss this exciting stage)

Then came out the adult monarch caterpillars. A few kids got to take them around to show everyone else - Gideon was one of these helpers. He thought this was such a special thing!

This is the adult monarch on Gideon's arm when he was showing it around.


Here's three adult monarch caterpillars. (One on upper middle in the fold of the leaf, one near the lower right of photo one more on the upper left) The big one on the upper left is hardly moving. The guy said that one will spin the chrysalis in a day or two.


Adult caterpillar aged 14+ days old. Note the large antenna on head and tail.


This one is the one that's about to spin it's chrysalis


Then out came the butterflies. This is a butterfly tasting Gideon's hair!


Here's a closer look at it tasting his hair. Look at the feet touching it.



Butterfly eating. Can you see the proboscis?


Here he demonstrates how to get the butterflies to extend their wings for determining gender.


And here's the opened wings. This butterfly is a male. See the two dots toward the bottom center of the wings? A female does not have these dots. Instead her wings have darker veins.


Then we turned down the lights and let the butterflies fly for the first time in their lives. Three went toward the window.

One landed by the stuffed animals on the windowsill.


One landed on the lights on the ceiling.


Here's a chrysalis. Can you see the wings inside of it?


What a wonderful way to celebrate the beginning of summer reading with the Monarchs!

All photos taken by me with my Canon Powershot A560 camera on June 9, 2008.