Tag Archives: early migration

Frosty Monarchs

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Adding insult to injury, the overly-ambitious monarchs in Nebraska this spring had to deal with cold wet weather all last weekend.  Temperatures got down to about 30 degrees F, and maybe lower in some places, and much of the prairie was covered in frost at least one morning.  During the days, it was rainy, windy, and cold.

We’d brought several monarch eggs from our garden into the house so we and the kids could watch them develop, and the caterpillars from those eggs seem to be doing very well.  When I went back to the garden, though, I didn’t find either eggs or caterpillars on the remaining plants.  I don’t know what happened, but I wonder if the caterpillars hatched out and then didn’t make it through the weather.  Maybe they’re just hiding really well?

Yesterday, I was out at our Platte River Prairies, and Katharine (Hubbard Fellow) and I spent a couple hours walking around and looking for caterpillars on milkweed with no luck.  In addition, the frost killed the tips of most of the warm-season grasses that were just emerging from the ground, and also wilted a lot of the common milkweed plants.  Interestingly, the whorled milkweed plants I’d seen caterpillars on during previous week seemed to have handled the cold just fine, but we couldn’t find any caterpillars on them.  We did find a few eggs on common milkweed plants, but it’ll be interesting to see how quickly those plants recover from the frost, and whether or not they are able to provide sufficient food for any caterpillars that hatch from those eggs.

This common milkweed plant looked a little wilted from the frost, but looked a lot better than the warm-season grasses surrounding it.

The common milkweed plant on the left was more typical of most of the plants we saw on our walk yesterday. Note the whorled milkweed on the right side of the image (skinny green leaves) – it looks perfectly fine.

This was one of several monarch eggs we found on common milkweed plants yesterday.  We found eggs on whorled milkweed as well.

There was good news from the day, though, which is that I saw two adult monarchs, one of which was nectaring on dandelions.  Maybe we’ll still see more eggs laid by this early migrant population.  Temperatures for the next couple weeks look pretty good, so those eggs might have both bigger milkweeds than their earlier counterparts and better weather as well.

This was one of two adult monarchs I saw yesterday. This one was so intent on feeding it let me army crawl to within a foot or so of it for a photograph.  Its faded color and rough-looking wings make it clear that it’s part of the migratory population that overwintered in Mexico.

While it’s been really interesting to see these monarchs show up early this spring, we’ve also seen some first-hand evidence of why we’re further north than those butterflies usually come to breed.  First, we were worried the butterflies wouldn’t find places to lay their eggs because the milkweed hadn’t emerged when they arrived.  Then we worried that caterpillars hatched out on those tiny milkweed plants might run out of food.  Now we’ve seen a frost and cold rainy weather that appears to have been hard on both caterpillars and milkweed.  Our prairies aren’t exactly giving those ambitious migratory monarchs a warm welcome.  Hopefully, we’ll see at least a few caterpillars turn into adults from this first generation, and their cousins further south will have better luck.  If so, we’ll see our regularly-scheduled influx of monarchs in a few weeks.  By then, we should be ready for them.

P.S.  Let’s just take a moment to appreciate the incredible journey the monarch in the above photo has made…  It hatched out of an egg late last summer, maybe even in Nebraska, and although its parents had been born near where it was born and hadn’t migrated anywhere, this one somehow knew that it needed to fly south.  Not only that, it knew to fly to a particular small spot northwest of Mexico City.  It somehow successfully navigated and survived the trip there, survived the winter with a horde of others like it, and then this spring, traveled about 1500 miles back north to get to the dandelion I photographed it on.  It’s a friggin’ butterfly, folks!  It’s just an amazing world, isn’t it?

Photo of the Week – April 28, 2017

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Ten days ago, I wrote about monarch butterflies returning from Mexico and flying much further north than is typical, and some of the risks they face because of that.  Many of you responded with your own similar observations and stories of monarchs across the country.  Since writing that post, I’ve spotted numerous monarchs both at our family prairie and in our Platte River Prairies, and reports to Journey North show monarchs have traveled even further north than we are here.

Earlier this week, my wife got to watch a monarch laying eggs on some small whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) plants in our backyard prairie garden.  A monarch (same one?) came by when I was around too, so I snuck out and tried to get photos of it but it was too cagey.  At the end of last year, Kim and I were talking about how surprisingly fast the couple of small whorled milkweed plants we’d gotten for the garden had spread.  Now we’re worried that we don’t have enough whorled milkweed to support all the eggs that have been laid on them!

A monarch egg on whorled milkweed in our backyard.

Usually, the monarch laid only a single egg per plant, but some plants had as many as three on the same small plant. Hopefully, those caterpillars will be able to make their way to surrounding plants if they overwhelm the ones they start on.

Yesterday, I went walking in our Platte River Prairies, hoping to find some eggs there as well.  I was looking for common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) but all I found was more whorled milkweed.  Sure enough, I found eggs on some of those plants too, and even spotted a couple tiny caterpillars.  All the plants I found were in prairie patches we’d burned and grazed last year.  I’m guessing the monarchs had the same impression I did of that grazed habitat – it’s sure easier to find tiny milkweed plants when there aren’t a lot of taller plants and thatch hiding them!

This tiny little caterpillar was busily munching away on whorled milkweed in our Platte River Prairies. It was just a couple millimeters long.

Whorled milkweed doesn’t usually get the accolades or attention it deserves.  In our prairies, it is often most abundant in areas where native prairies have been degraded by a long history of overgrazing and broadcast herbicide use (before we acquired the properties).  The plants are relatively small (often less than a foot tall) and have small white flower clusters and skinny seed pods.  When we’re harvesting seeds for our prairie restoration work, we try to get enough seed to ensure the species will establish in our plantings, but probably haven’t always worked as hard as we should at it.

Whorled milkweed is often overlooked and underappreciated, but is certainly proving its worth this spring.

The monarch eggs and caterpillars I found yesterday were in a restored prairie we’d seeded back in 2000.  The patches of whorled milkweed I found were over 15 feet in diameter, and some contained well over 100 plants.  I’m awfully glad now that we took the time to find and harvest whorled milkweed seeds during the summer of 1999, and wish we’d harvested even more.  Nevertheless, the plants that established back in 2000 have spread successfully and are now helping to rear the next generation of monarch butterflies.  When those caterpillars emerge as butterflies, they’ll find themselves in the middle of a large and diverse prairie community, full of flowers for them to feed on.  Eighteen years ago, that same location was a cornfield.  Today, it is giving some way-too-early monarchs a chance at survival.

This plant had both an egg and an already-hatched caterpillar. Hopefully, as it grows, it will find not only sufficient milkweed, but also abundant nectar resources for its adult life. (You can see a larger and more clear version of this image by clicking on it.  Maybe you can figure out what the little white bump is on the caterpillar’s back…  Part of the egg?  Something else?)