A few left

We only have about 4 chrysalises left. It getting cooler, too.

All our friends!

https://youtu.be/ZRjOgsoNP7U

A Monarch Emerges

https://youtu.be/6q2UjgyehxE

An Empty Chrysalis!

Stretching the Wings

On Our Purple Flowers

I thought we might have some butterflies on our purple lythrum flowers, but I think they were moths. There were some bees, too.

Three

We just found a third on the other side of the patio!

Butterflies!

Just a couple hours ago we had a black chrysalis, now we had a butterfly! Actually, we found two of them!

Close!

One chrysalis that used to be bright green is now really dark and you can see some butterfly wing patterns through it!

Darker Still

This chrysalis is looking even darker today!

A Little Darker?

I still see no caterpillars, but there are four chrysalises. This one is looking a little darker.

No more caterpillars!

I could not find any caterpillars on our milkweed anymore, but one chrysalis has released it's butterfly! There are at least 4 more.

Almost a Chrysalis

This is almost a chrysalis, but not quite!

Still Eating

Not much to update. I can see 4 chrysalises, one hanging caterpillar, and about ten eating.

Watching the Change!

Today my nephew came over to see the caterpillars and saw one create it's chrysalis right in front of him! He took some pictures to show the process.

 

Chrysalis Find

I've found three, but a chrysalis is a difficult thing to find. There may be more, I'll keep looking.

 

Here is what I mean. When you look at this picture, can you find the chrysalis? It blends in with the milkweed leaves really well!

It was hard for me. Here is some help if you haven't seen it yet.

Just so you can see it well, here is a close-up shot of that camouflaged caterpillar.

Busy Munchers!

Crazy Eaters!

I have been impressed by how much the caterpillars are eating! They will often hang up-side down and eat backwards.

Here you can see they completely cleaned off most of these plants - they barely have any leaves left! (You might also be able to see three of them hiding on the bottom!)

They like the leaves, but they also really like the buds of the plants. This is where the pods open up and lots of feathery white seeds come out (which is why people call this plant milkweed).

They also leave evidence that they are good eaters on the ground below them! (At least it's not as big as the dog doo-doo in other parts of the yard.)

Chrysalis

The hanger caterpillar from yesterday made a cocoon! There might be more tomorrow!

Tres Mas!

There were three more hanging caterpillars this evening. I heard that it takes about 2 weeks for them to change - more or less depending on the temperatures outside.

Cocoons soon?

Yesterday I noticed that one of our caterpillars attached itself to a stem and was hanging in this shape - I'm thinking we might have a cocoon soon!

We have Caterpillars!

Two and a half years ago our family planted some milkweed in our backyard hoping to attract some monarch butterflies. The first year the plants were really small and we didn't see anything. Last year we saw some milkweed, but no butterflies. This week we noticed that we have caterpillars! Over 20 of them crawling all over our milkweed!